A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF ARAB LEADERSHIP STYLES ON ORGANISATIONAL … · 2018-10-05 · A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF ARAB LEADERSHIP STYLES ON ORGANISATIONAL & EMPLOYEE’S

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF

ARAB LEADERSHIP STYLES ON

ORGANISATIONAL & EMPLOYEES’

PERFORMANCE

على كل من األداء أساليب القيادة العربية لتأثيردراسة نقدية

للمؤسسةالوظيفي و التنظيمي

By

Mariam Juma Bualshawarib

Student ID: 90025

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of

MSc in HRM (Masters in Human Resource Management)

Dissertation Supervisor

Professor Ashly H. Pinnington

February-2014

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF ARAB LEADERSHIP STYLES ON ORGANISATIONAL & EMPLOYEE’S PERFORMANCE

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DECLARATION

DISSERTATION RELEASE FORM

Student Name

Mariam Juma BuAlshawarib

Student ID

90025

Programme

MSc in Human Resource

Management

Date

28 Jan 2014

Title

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF ARAB LEADERSHIP

STYLES ON ORGANISATIONAL & EMPLOYEES’

PERFORMANCE

I warrant that the content of this dissertation is the direct result of my own work and

that any use made in it of published or unpublished copyright material falls within the

limits permitted by international copyright conventions.

I understand that one copy of my dissertation will be deposited in the University

Library for permanent retention.

I hereby agree that the material mentioned above for which I am author and copyright

holder may be copied and distributed by The British University in Dubai for the

purposes of research, private study or education and that The British University in

Dubai may recover from purchasers the costs incurred in such copying and

distribution, where appropriate.

I understand that The British University in Dubai may make that copy available in

digital format if appropriate.

I understand that I may apply to the University to retain the right to withhold or to

restrict access to my dissertation for a period which shall not normally exceed four

calendar years from the congregation at which the degree is conferred, the length of

the period to be specified in the application, together with the precise reasons for

making that application.

Signature


Page 3 of 139

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF ARAB

LEADERSHIP STYLES ON ORGANISATIONAL &

EMPLOYEES’ PERFORMANCE

على كل من األداء الوظيفي و التنظيمي أساليب القيادة العربية لتأثيردراسة نقدية

للمؤسسة

Dissertation Length: 22,990 words

(excluding references and appendices)


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ABSTRACT

Leaders plays vital role in ensuring high organizational performance. With an

appropriate balance of motivation, ability and opportunity given to individuals;

leaders promote excellent organizational performance. A fair balance of the equation

including leadership style, proper work environment, adequate policies and

procedures, tools to function and sufficient accountability, strong cultural values that

promote transparency and provide clear guidance on desired outcome is what’s

needed for employees to perform. Though studies on leadership roles in enhancing

performance amongst employees are ample in developed countries, there has been a

lack of research on this subject in the Middle East. Therefore, the researcher decided

to evaluate Arab leadership style, organizational performance and employee

performance in a country that is well known for its wealth and multi-national

companies such as Dubai. Unlike many other developing countries around the GCC,

Dubai seems more of a central hub that attracts people from developed and

developing countries to invest or even find a career. This fact allows the researcher to

have a stronger view on Arab leadership style and their impact on performance, as it

comes from various nationalities and expertise in the area.

The empirical research study used questionnaires with questions tailored

towards determining the relationship between: Arab leadership styles and employee

performance, which should indirectly determine the relationship between Arab

leadership style and organizational performance. Also, the research intent was to

identify the pattern of Arab leadership and the extent to which it has affected

organizational performance. In addition, the researcher was interested in finding out

more about potential factors responsible for low worker performance and how


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leadership style has affected labour management relations and productivity in four

selected small scale organizations that are grouped under one holding company.

After analysing the results using both qualitative and quantitative methods, it

is concluded that in order to accomplish the objectives of different organisations need

in Dubai, it is necessary that leaders: recognizes the needs of the workers; employs

appropriate motivational tools such as right leadership style using appropriate

leadership and management programs; providing workers with appropriate guidance

and working tools; develop an adequate performance management system that would

uncover sources of potential bias and accordingly incentives best performances.

Key words: organisations, leadership style, culture, performance, motivation and

organizational and employee performance.


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على كل من األداء الوظيفي و التنظيمي أساليب القيادة العربية لتأثير :دراسة نقدية ملخص

للمؤسسة

، التوازن المناسب بين الدافع نسبة من مع الوظيفي. في ضمان األداء و فعالا القادة دورا حيويايلعب

األداء الوظيفي و تنميةمهارات التفكير اإلبداعي تعزيز على قادةيعمل اللفرص لألفراد، إتاحة االقدرة و

، بيئة العمل المناسبة الرائدة/الناجحةبما في ذلك أسلوب القيادة المعايير السابقة فيتوازن ال القليل من .ميزتالم

يل وتخ ، بما في ذلكللعمل و المستلزمات المطلوبة دواتتوفر األوالسياسات و اإلجراءات المناسبة،

النتائجتقديم توجيهات واضحة بشأن ، التي تعزز الشفافية ةالراسخ و العادات، القيم الالزمةت لصالحياا

ة الراسخةالقياد دور. على الرغم من الدراسات حول ئهم المهنيأداالموظفون لتطوير حتاجه يالمرجوة هو ما

هناك نقص في األبحاث حول إل إننا نجدتعزيز األداء بين الموظفين وافرة في البلدان المتقدمة، تأسيس و في

في الشرق األوسط. لذلك، قرر الباحث تقييم أسلوب القيادة العربية، واألداء التنظيمي دول ا الموضوع في هذ

الجنسيات الشركات ذات نطاق واسع من حيث تعدد و تعدد اتثروبوافر ال دولة تتسمفي الوظيفيداء األ تنمية

دبي. خالفا للعديد من البلدان النامية األخرى في أنحاء دول مارات العربية المتحدة و باألخص مدينةكدولة اإل

البلدان مختلف أنحاء العالم سواء بدو أكثر من محور مركزي يجذب الناس من تمجلس التعاون الخليجي، دبي

. هذه حقيقة تسمح للباحث مستقبل مهني مستقر و متوازنستثمار أو حتى العثور على والنامية على اإلأالمتقدمة

خبرته الوافرةمن والذي ينبث ، الوظيفي على أسلوب القيادة العربية وتأثيرها على األداءبارزن يكون له رأي أ

ف الجنسيات والخبرات في المنطقة.مختل مع

جريبية تبحوث و استبيانات منها مختلف الدراسات و البحوث من أجل هذا البحث العلمي تم إستخدام

يجب بدورها أن ، والتيالوظيفيداء األالقيادة العربية و تحديد العالقة بين: أساليب لصا مع أسئلة مصممة خصي

لعربية و األداء التنظيمي. أيضا، كان القصد من العالقة بين أسلوب القيادة ا بناء بشكل غير مباشر علىتعمل

فة إلى ذلك، كان الباحث مهتما األداء التنظيمي. باإلضا تأثيرها علىتحديد نمط القيادة العربية و مدى البحوث

يعمل على أسلوب القيادة إن نخفاض أداء العاملين وكيفإة عن مسؤولالبمعرفة المزيد عن العوامل المحتملة

صغرة و ذات اإلنتاجية في أربع منظمات كذلك مدى تأثيرة على العالقات بين اإلدارة و العمالة و تأسيس

تحت شركة قابضة. تعملالتي و دومحدنطاق


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نه من أجل تحقيق أإلى تم اإلستنتاج ، األساليب النوعية والكميةمختلف ستخدامإبعد تحليل النتائج ب

فيتوظبحتياجات العمال؛ إ: يدرك القادة المنظمات المختلفة في دبي، فمن الضروري أنالمرجوة من هداف األ

ة يداراإلو القياديةبرامج الستخدام الرائدة بإ ةيب القياديلاساأل على سبيل المثال،أدوات تحفيزية مناسبة و تمكين

تطوير نظام مالئم إلدارة كما يلزم جيهات و أدوات العمل المناسبة ، تو بما يتطلبونه من، وتوفير العمال المالئمة

أفضل تكافأ حوافز تأسيسوفقا لذلك التي من شأنها أن تكشف عن مصادر التحيز المحتملة وو الوظيفي األداء

.األداءات

و األداء التنظيمي أخيرا التحفيز و، األداء، حضارة و تقاليدب القيادة، يلاأسالكلمات الرئيسية : المنظمات،

.الوظيفي

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I am grateful to the former leaders of this respectful large UAE base company for

their timely response and advice during this study. I also extend my gratitude to the

human resources departments, of each entity for their continuous support in

organizing the gatherings and encouraging employees to attend the sessions.

Furthermore, I would like to thank the participants in my survey, who have willingly

shared their precious time during the process of interviewing.

A special thanks to my father, Emirates International Telecommunications LLC, my

current employer, and every individual, who inspired and encouraged me to pursue

my master’s degree and supported me through on-going advice and encouragement to

this day, without them I would not have done it.

I would like to express my greatest gratitude to Prof. Ashly, for his understanding and

continuous support and encouragement to achieve this as well as the useful ideas,

thoughts that have been exchanged at various occasions that helped me with this

study. And last but most certainly not least, I am grateful to God for His mercy that

made this possible.


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Table of Contents

DECLARATION ....................................................................................................................... 2

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................... 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENT............................................................................................................ 8

CHAPTER1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 11

1. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 11

1.1. Research Questions ...................................................................................................... 14

1.2. Hypothesis ................................................................................................................... 14

1.3. Significance of the Study ............................................................................................. 14

1.4. Evaluation of the Study ................................................................................................ 15

1.5. Structure of the Dissertation ........................................................................................ 15

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 17

2. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 17

2.1. Leadership Theories & Style ....................................................................................... 17

2.1.1. Transformational Leadership ................................................................................... 19

2.1.2. Transactional Leadership ......................................................................................... 21

2.2. Performance ................................................................................................................. 23

2.2.1 Individual Performance ............................................................................................. 24

2.2.2. Organizational Performance .................................................................................... 26

2.2.3 Leadership Style and Performance ............................................................................ 27

2.3. Organizational culture and performance ...................................................................... 31

2.3.1. Leadership, Organizational Culture & Performance ............................................... 35

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND DIAGRAMIC MODEL OF THE HYPOTHESIS .. 41

3. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 41

3.1. Research Methods ........................................................................................................ 44

3.2. Qualitative Data .......................................................................................................... 45

3.2.1. Expert Interview Schedule ........................................................................................ 46

3.3. Quantitative Data ........................................................................................................ 46

3.3.1. Questionnaire Design ............................................................................................... 47

3.3.2. Requirements of Questionnaire................................................................................. 48

3.3.3. Data Collection ......................................................................................................... 49

3.4. Process of the Sample .................................................................................................. 50

3.4.1. Questionnaire Content .............................................................................................. 51

3.4.2. Interview Content ...................................................................................................... 51

3.5. Content Analysis .......................................................................................................... 53

3.6. SPSS Analysis.............................................................................................................. 54

3.7. Difficulties and Mitigation Methods ............................................................................ 55

3.8. Professional, Legal and Ethical Issues ......................................................................... 55

CHAPTER 4: MAIN FINDINGS AND DATA ANALYSIS ................................................. 56

4. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 56

4.1 Leaders Data Analysis .................................................................................................. 56


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4.1.1 Qualitative Data ........................................................................................................ 56

4.1.2 Summary of the Data Collected ................................................................................. 58

4.2 Employees Rating Data Analysis.................................................................................. 59

4.2.1 Demographic Summary ............................................................................................. 59

4.2.2 Reliability ................................................................................................................... 62

4.2.2.1 Leadership independent variable reliability: .......................................................... 62

4.2.2.2 Performance dependent variable reliability: .......................................................... 63

4.2.3 Correlation................................................................................................................. 63

4.2.4. Regression ................................................................................................................. 66

CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSIONS ................................................................................................ 80

5. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 80

5.1. Qualitative Study (Leadership Styles) ......................................................................... 80

5.2. Quantitative Study (Leaders Rating) ........................................................................... 82

5.3. Quantitative Study (Employees Rating) ...................................................................... 83

5.4 Hypothesis1: There is a positive relationship between Arab leader transformational

leadership and employee performance................................................................................ 86

5.6 Hypothesis2: There is a negative relationship between Arab leader transactional

leadership and employee performance................................................................................ 87

5.7 Hypothesis3: Arab leadership styles (transformational and transactional) impact the

employee’s performance. .................................................................................................... 89

CHAPTER 6: RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION ................................................... 91

6. Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 91

6.1 Limitations of the Research .......................................................................................... 91

6.2 Recommendations ......................................................................................................... 93

6.3 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 95

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................... 98

Appendix A: Descriptive Statistics .................................................................................... 102

Appendix B: Reliability Analysis ...................................................................................... 108

Appendix C: Correlation .................................................................................................... 113

Appendix D: Factor Analysis and Regression ................................................................... 117

Appendix E: MLQ Scoring Key and Employee Performance Scoring Key ...................... 131

Appendix F: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Leaders Questionnaire and

Interview questions ............................................................................................................ 132

Appendix G: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and Performance Rater

Questionnaire ..................................................................................................................... 135

Appendix H: Cover Letter ................................................................................................. 139


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CHAPTER1: INTRODUCTION

1. Introduction

The concept and definition of leadership may differ from one individual, or

situation, to another. The term “leadership” has been used in various aspects of human

endeavour such as politics, businesses, academics and social work to name a few.

Early views about leadership show it as personal ability and capability of the

individual. Messick & Kramer (2004 cited in Obiwuru, Okwu, Apa & Nwankwere,

2011) argued that the degree to which the individual exhibits leadership traits depends

not only on his characteristics and personal trait, but also on the characteristics of the

situation and environment in which he/she finds himself. Since human beings could

become members of an organization to achieve certain personal objectives, the

amount that they are active members depends on the extent to which they are

convinced that their membership will enable them to achieve their pre-determined

objectives. Therefore, an individual is likely to support an organization if he believes

that his personal objectives and goals could be met; if not, the person’s interest may

decline. Leadership style in an organization plays a significant role in enhancing or

hindering the interests and commitments of the individuals in the organization. Thus,

Glantz (2002) emphasizes the need for a manager to find his leadership style.

Leadership styles often will have significant effects not only on small

organizations but also on many large corporations. These styles affect everyone from

senior management to temporary employees. They build the corporate culture which

consequently has significant influences on both employee and the organizational

performance. In fact, Arab leadership styles play a significant role in shaping the

organizational culture, based on the fact that most businesses are family oriented in

nature.


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Leadership styles are very dynamic and each has its own impact on individual

performance and, consequently, on organizational performance. Accordingly,

employee performance has been shown to have a tremendous positive effect on

organisational performance (Collis & Montgomery, 1995). Although some of the top

and middle management believe that they run the show, the principal influence on the

organisation’s performance is the quality of the workforce at all levels of the

organisation, which only a great leader can understand and influence. Leaders must

provide opportunities and tools to these individuals to perform, otherwise their

performance may decline and subsequently the performance of the organization

would decline. Therefore, one of the many reasons why some organizations have

failed lies in the way in which their leaders managed their people and the inadequate

or lack of understanding that such leaders had of the value of their taskforce.

Organizations that have effective leadership and management rooted within their

cultural values; have the ability to not only retain their calibre, but also maintain high

performance.

Middle Eastern countries are small cultural based communities. They

implement business practices that maintain strong cultural ties and in some cases a

sense of predominant family oriented functional work environments. The manner in

which these cultures may differ from one another depends on the leadership style and

values, which drives the performance of both employees and organizations. Research

conducted by Hawkamah institution has shown that family owned firms represent

more than 60% of the total equity market value of the top 20 firms in the GCC. In

fact, the survey also noted that 50 to 66.7% of board seats are held by members of the

same family. This emphasizes having the same shared values and visions, which is

usually cascaded down to employees. A small portion of these family oriented


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businesses is connected to the royal families of these countries. Although there is

some research that has studied the direct relationship between leadership style,

organizational culture and commitment, the majority of leadership-related studies

have indicated that leadership style has a great influence on commitment (Lok &

Crawford, 1999). It is the role of these leaders to create an environment that inspires

employee commitment and increases their motivation to perform.

Stogdill (1948) believed that situational factors played a strong role on

leadership traits. If we believe that trait matters, then history is the framework for

Arab leadership, for example a leadership that has been influenced by the rulers of the

country. Under the vision and guidance of H.H. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al

Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, the UAE has

implemented many programs on a country level, which have been subsequently

enforced on an organizational level. These programs are designed using various well

known organizations under the patronage of H.H., for instance, the UAE Government

Leaders Program, Emaar Properties Leadership program, Emirates Executive

program, INSEAD Executive program and many more. The instigation of these

programs lies solely in the vision and desire to build more leaders in the region who

will pave the way for generations to come. Apart from these programs, there are

various initiatives that support young leaders to discover their leadership skills and

work on them, such as Dubai SME for Small and Medium Enterprises (the emphasis

of which is to build leaders in the Arab region). What we are looking for is the type of

Arab leadership styles that exists in the region, and how these styles affect employee

performance and influence their organization’s performance.


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1.1. Research Questions

1. Does Arab transformational leadership style associate with employee

performance?

2. Does Arab transactional leadership style associate with employee

performance?

3. Does Arab leadership style (transformational and transactional) build

organisational culture and shape the relationship between the

organizational and employee performance?

1.2. Hypothesis

Furthermore, the following hypotheses were developed:

H1. There is a positive relationship between Arab leaders’ transformational leadership

and employee performance.

H2. There is a negative relationship between Arab leaders’ transactional leadership

and employee performance.

H3. Arab leadership styles (transformational and transactional) impact the

performance of the employee’s and thus organizational performance.

1.3. Significance of the Study

The study is mainly about Arab leadership style and its impact on organization

and employee performance. The study aligns with the concept of leadership as

explained by Taffinder (2006) and thus, considers leadership within the context of a

holding company that has various entities that are part of different sectors. It allows us


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to examine how the leadership of Arab leaders of different entities under one umbrella

“holding company” contributes towards achieving high employee and organization

performance. A holding type of organization is often one with a medium number of

employees and can have medium size to low capital strength under each entity.

Although these entities falls under one management leadership style and main

strategy, they all act as separate organizations, with completely different lines of

business and different leadership styles.

1.4. Evaluation of the Study

From this consideration, this study is intended to evaluate the effect of Arab

leadership style on the performance of these small-to-medium size

entities/organizations under the holding company, that contribute to empirical studies

on leadership style and business performance. Further, it will propose quantitative-

based recommendations for Arab leaders and leadership programmes to re-position

the small organizations at integral part of the engine of economic growth and

development in UAE.

1.5. Structure of the Dissertation

The study is divided into five sections.

1. Section one is the introduction, which gives the reader a brief description on

the content of the research, with brief background, research question,

hypothesis, significant of the study and the structure.

2. Section two is a review of the related literature, that consist of three sections,

leadership theories and style, individual and organizational performance

theories and finally the link between leadership style and both individual and


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organizational performance that are somewhat derived from the organization

culture.

3. Section three discusses the methodology employed in carrying out the study,

the different methods of data analysis used, such as, interviews, questionnaire

etc., the reasons and benefits of using the particular methods and their

limitations on the research.

4. Section four is data presentation, analysis, and results of the data collection

from previously mentioned employed methodology.

5. Section five is the finding and discussion of the presented data and analysis,

explaining how well it represents our hypothesis in relation to our literature

review.

6. Section five concludes the study and provides necessary recommendations for

further studies in this field and for Arab leader.


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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2. Introduction

The literature review presented in this paper is examined in three stages. First,

studies of the different leadership theories and style are discussed. Second, research

into performance of individuals and the organizational performance and its link with

leadership styles, and finally, the analysis of leadership style and how it shapes

organizational culture and the links between organization and employee performance.

2.1. Leadership Theories & Style

Leadership has been identified as the main force that creates higher impact in

the field of organizational behaviour. Their ability to understand and drive employee

performance and lead to better organizational performance is remarkable. Their

impact reflects as either creative or productive performance. As stated by Bukingham

“Discover what is unique about each person and capitalize on it” (cited in Araoz,

2007). Leadership is one with the most dynamic effects during individual and

organizational interaction. As defined by Yukl in Larssona & Vinberg (Leadership

behaviour in successful organisations: Universal or situation-dependent?, 2010, p.

330) leadership is “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about

what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and

collective efforts to accomplish shared goal”. Obiwuru et al. argues that the ability of

an individual to execute “collaborative effort” as he said it depends on his leadership

skills and competencies. “Lee & Chuang (2009) explain that an excellent leader not

only inspires subordinate potential to enhance efficiency but also meets their

requirements in the process of achieving organizational goals. Stogdill (1957) defined


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leadership as the individual behaviour to guide a group to achieve the common target

(for further discussion see: Obiwuru, Okwu, Apa & Nwankwere, 2011).

Among the various leadership theories in relation to employee and

organizational performance, perhaps the most prominent is the transformational-

transactional theory of leadership (Obiwuru, Okwu, Apa & Nwankwere, 2011). As

identified by Kirkman and Rosen (1999) in (Williams, Parker, & Turner, 2010) team

performance is an emergent factor with team empowerment that is developed through

factors such as leader behaviour, responsibility, and various other factors. More

specifically, as explain by Saowalux & Peng (2007) and Burns (1978) they build two

hypothesis two differentiate what they called “ordinary” from “extraordinary”

leadership; these are transactional and transformational leadership (Obiwuru, Okwu,

Apa & Nwankwere, 2011). Transactional (ordinary) leadership mainly believe in

straight forward exchange type relationship. In which followers’ need to comply with

the demands to achieve results in exchange of a particular reward. In contrast,

transformational leaders believe in building individuals and teams, in which the

leaders lead people in an effort to transform them as well as realign their goals with

the organizational goals. They raise followers’ awareness levels by highlighting the

importance of teamwork, collaboration, change, openness and self-development in

order to achieve better results. They build individuals self-motivation in a way that

forces them to focus on setting goals for self and the team so as to accomplish

outstanding performance for the sake of the larger mission and vision of the

organization (Obiwuru, Okwu, Apa & Nwankwere, 2011).

‘Such total engagement (emotional, intellectual and moral) encourages

followers to develop and perform beyond expectations (Burns, 1978;

Bass, 1985). Burns (1978) observes that transformational leadership

involves the process of influencing major changes in organizational

attitudes in order to achieve the organization’s objectives and

strategies. Bass (1985) observed that transactional leaders work within


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their organizational cultures following existing rules and procedures,

while transformational leaders change their cultures based on a new

vision and a revision of shared assumptions, values and norms. When

an organization must adapt to changes in technology, its leadership is a

critical factor in its successful change. Bass (1985) operationalized the

work of Burns (1978) by developing a model of transformational and

transactional leadership, referred to in more recent publications as the

full range leadership model (Bass & Avolio, 1997).’

(Obiwuru, Okwu, Apa & Nwankwere, 2011)

2.1.1. Transformational Leadership

In the various leadership styles suggested by scholars, it’s clear that there are

two groups of leaderships each of which differs based on the way they motivate

others. Transformational leadership style transforms the personal values and beliefs of

the leaders to stimulate and motivates subordinates to achieve more (Bass, 1985).

Burns (1978, cited in Chan, 2010, p. 60) identified transformational leadership as a

process where, one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and

followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality.

In transformational leadership style, the leaders are admired, respected and

trusted by the followers as they sense the trust and respect mutually in return by the

leader, therefore followers display high self-motivation and enthusiasm in their

performance (Bass, 1985; Katz & Kahn, 1978). Transformational leader pay attention

to individuals needs to stimulate their creative and innovative mind toward the larger

objective of the organization or team and their own higher needs. Leaders under this

style encourages followers to seek innovative and creative approaches to achieve their

objectives, which results into new ideas and addressing issues and finding improved

solutions (Bass et al. 1994; for further discussion see: Obiwuru, Okwu, Akpa, &

Nwankwere, 2011). They also empower their teams by promoting autonomy that

creates a sense of belonging in these employees and develops the desired motivation

to perform (Ceharbonn, Barlin & Kellowa, 2001). As a result, there is an increase in


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their level of performance, satisfaction, and commitment to the goals of their

organization (Podsakoff et al. 1996). Transformational leaders generally have a more

content workforce, since their employees have input into decision-making and can

feel the involvement level as well as the sense of belonging.

As proposed by Bass (1990) there are four main behaviours or attributes of

transformational leadership, these are idealized influence, inspirational motivation,

intellectual stimulation, and individual consideration.

‘Charismatic, or idealized influence or attributes, is characterized by

vision and a sense of mission, instilling pride in and among the group,

and gaining respect and trust (Humphreys & Einstein, 2003).

Charismatic behaviour also induces followers to go beyond self-

interest for the good of the group, providing reassurance that obstacles

will be overcome, and promoting confidence in the likelihood of

successful achievement and execution of influence (Conger &

Kanungo, 1998; Howell & Frost, 1989) and followers place an

inordinate amount of confidence and trust in charismatic leaders

(Howell & Avolio, 1992).’


‘Drawing on Bandura (1986), Shamir et al. (1993) propose that charismatic

leaders’ expression of high expectations for follower performance and their ability to

persuade followers that they can meet those expectations motivate followers to

produce and sustain greater effort via the mediation of self-efficacy’ (Shea, 1999).

‘Inspirational motivation is usually a companion of charisma and is

concerned with a leader setting higher standards, thus becoming a sign

and focal point of reference. Bass (1985) points out followers look up

to their inspirational leader as one providing emotional appeal to

increase awareness and understanding of mutually desirable goals.

This is characterized by the communication of high expectations, using

symbols to focus efforts, and expressing important purpose in simple

ways. The leader always behaves by talking optimistically about the

future, articulating a compelling vision for the future and providing an

exciting image of organizational change (Bass & Avolio, 1994). The

motivation occurs by providing meaning and challenge to the

followers. Work, individual and team spirit are aroused and

enthusiasm and optimism is displayed. The leader encourages

followers to envision attractive future states, for the organization and

themselves (Bass et al. 1997).


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Intellectual stimulation provides followers with challenging

new ideas and encourages them to break away from the old ways of

thinking (Bass, 1985). The leader is characterized as one promoting

intelligence, rationality, logical thinking, and careful problem solving.

The attributes include seeking differing perspectives when solving

problems, suggesting new ways of examining how to complete

assignments and encouraging re-thinking of ideas that have not been

questioned in the past (Bass & Avolio, 1994). The leader encourages

the followers to be innovative and creative by questioning

assumptions, reframing problems, and approaching old situations in

new ways.

Finally, the fourth dimension of transformational leadership is

individual consideration, which is concerned with developing

followers by coaching and mentoring (Bass, 1985; Bass & Avolio,

1990). The leader pays close attention to the inter-individual

differences among the followers and acts as mentor to the follower. He

teaches and helps others develop their strengths, and listens attentively

to the concerns of others (Bass & Avolio, 1994). “Followers are

treated individually in order to raise their levels of maturity and to

enhance effective ways of addressing their goals and challenges”

(Bass, 1985).’


Leaders under the transformational style, emphasizes that management must

offer guidance to the teams and departments while being open to accepting input from

individuals. They still reserve the right to make final decisions but always encourage

feedback, ideas, and suggestions from all levels of employees which makes them feel

connected to the organization. As stated in Vigoda-Gadot (2007) that Burns (1978)

suggests “that the outcome of transformational leadership is a relationship of mutual

stimulus that transforms the led into leaders and the leaders into moral agents.”

2.1.2. Transactional Leadership

As discussed earlier, transactional leadership involves an exchange system that

emphasises on follower compliance with leader request in order to be rewarded. The

leader ensures that individuals are performing the desired tasks to meet desired

organizational objectives (Boehnke et al. 2003). ‘The objective of the transactional

leader is to ensure that the path to goal attainment is clearly understood by the internal


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actors, to remove potential barriers within the system, and to motivate the actors to

achieve the predetermined goals’ (House & Aditya, 1997) cited in (Obiwuru, Okwu,

Akpa, & Nwankwere, 2011). Such type of leadership style results in a performance

that is consistent with size of the reward. Several researchers shown that this style of

leadership has significant positive correlation with employees’ performance,

commitment, and satisfactions in various different cultures.

‘Transactional leaders display both constructive and corrective

behaviours. Constructive behaviour entails contingent reward, and the

corrective dimension imbibes management-by-exception. Contingent

reward involves the clarification of the work required to obtain

rewards and the use of incentives and contingent reward to exert

influence. It considers follower expectations and offers recognition

when goals are achieved. The clarification of goals and objectives and

providing of recognition once goals are achieved should result in

individuals and groups achieving expected levels of performance

(Bass, 1985)’

(Obiwuru, Okwu, Akpa, & Nwankwere, 2011)

Contingent reward leaders would either reward or discipline their followers

based on their performance (Senior, 1997). Active management-by-exception refers to

the leader with set standards for compliance and are more result oriented; this type of

leadership may include punishment as well as rewards for meeting compliance with

those standards. As stated by Pradeep & Prabhu (2011) “The leader concentrates fully

on dealing with employees’ mistakes, complaints and failures.” This style of

leadership implies micromanagement were close monitoring of nonconformities,

mistakes, and errors are major tasks and accordingly corrective actions are to be taken

as and when necessary. This style clearly defines the division between leaders and

workers were leaders take all decisions on company operational and strategic plans

and provide less options or room for creativity, creating a gap between the employees’

and the organization’s goals. Transactional leadership style is basically were the

leader makes work more instrumental for followers with clear procedures and


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guidance to reach their own existing goals while concurrently contributing to the

goals of the organisations (Brand et al. 2000).

It was shown in a research study conducted by Pruijn & Boucher (1994) that

transformational leadership is an extension of transactional leadership (Bass, 1997).

The difference between these two styles is that followers of transformational

leadership exhibit performance which is beyond expectations, while transactional

leadership, at best, leads to expected performance (Bass & Avolio, 1994).

Transactional leaders can be more effective in markets that are continuously growing

and where there was little or no competition (Ristow,1998), which is certainly not the

case in today’s market, where we face high competition and clear lack of resources. In

fact, the current competitive business environment requires a new style of leadership

that ensures organization survival before it can perform (Bass, 1985; Brand et al.

2000).

2.2. Performance

Although the term performance is used extensively in all fields of

management, its actual meaning is rarely explicitly defined by authors even when the

main focus of the research is performance. It is often identified or associated with

effectiveness and efficiency (Neely, Gregory & Platts, 1995). Performance is a

relative concept defined in terms of some referent employing a complex set of time-

based measurements of generating future results (Corvellec, 1995). As a result the

majority of organisations have streamlined their organization/operations performance

under the concept of performance objectives. These performance objectives, define

clear organizational objectives that cascade to the departments and individuals. Also

and more specifically in the Arab region, organisations can perform well or poorly


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due to external forces, such as exchange rates, imposed taxation, cultural forces, etc,

which many organizations fail to consider, while setting their organizational

objectives/goals that eventually impact on individuals. To maintain and have accurate

performance objectives and results in such an environment, the organisation needs to

define clear SMART objectives to get the most out of its assets, especially the human

assets and reward them accordingly. Performance management is an on-going and

joint process between the employee and the leader of an organization who, “strives to

improve the employee’s individual performance and his contribution to the

organisation’s wider objectives” (Hellriegel et al. 2004, p. 249). Although,

organizational performance is a concern of each and every member of the

organization; stakeholders, shareholders, management, customers and employees, is a

collective believe and recognition that the notion is derived from the organisation’s

human resources department (Hellriegel, et al. 2004).

2.2.1 Individual Performance

As stated by Amos et al. (2004, p. 63) “the effective management of individual

performance is critical to the execution of strategy and the organization achieving its

strategic objectives”. Performance cannot be left indeterminate expecting individuals

to achieve, although some employees naturally desire performance for various

reasons. This desire needs to be designed and facilitate a systematic approach for it to

accomplish its goals (Amos et al. 2004). Individual performance and its management

has become a large issue in today’s business environment (Armstrong & Baron,

1998). Whetten & Cameron (1998) state that individual performance is the product of

ability multiplied by motivation. We can say that an individual’s performance is

influenced by factors such as ability to perform, motivation factors and the


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opportunities given, known as AMO or the performance equation, as shown in the

diagram below in Figure 1. The performance equation can also be used as a method of

succession planning for those individuals, who have the (ability) and desire to

perform and the “will do” attitude (motivation) to perform which accordingly provide

them with the necessary tools to perform (opportunity).

Figure 1- The AMO framework

Adapted from Boxall & Purcell (2008)

Cummings & Schwab (1973) also had similar views, where they described the

ability of the individual as a reflection of their capabilities that enables them to behave

in a certain way, and motivation as the effort or energy, which drives the behaviour

and determines how vigorously capabilities will be employed to perform certain tasks.

The balance of both factors is quite important to achieve desired results. This is also

supported by Vroom (1964) who indicates that factors that influence individual

performance within an organisation are the ability of the individual and the

willingness of the individual to exert effort (motivation).


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2.2.2. Organizational Performance

Performance when it comes to the organization can be defined as a set of time-

based specific and well measured objectives that generate future results (Corvellec,

1995). For more than a decade, organizations have experienced radical and dynamic

change factors. Every moment presents a diverse set of challenges and obstacles, for

instance, laws and regulations, economic factors, lack of competencies in the market

and, most important these obstacles are unpredictable. Many organizations believe

that their employees contribute to the organization’s performance. As a matter of fact,

employees play a pivotal role in organizational success (Collis & Montgomery, 1995).

Many research articles have shown that employee performance has a significant

positive effect on organizational performance. However, major pitfalls in an

organization occur when managers believe their organizations are constantly

operating at the highest level (Foot & Hook, 1999).

The complexity of managing organizations today requires managers to view

performance in several areas simultaneously. Therefore, a performance management

system is a very important set of tools to manage employees’ performance within any

organization. There are various tools that manage both individual and organization

performance, such as, the Balanced Scorecard by Kaplan & Norton (1996), and the

360 degree process of performance management that includes group assessments and

peer reviews, as well as written reports (Hellriegel, et al. 2004). In recent years,

performance management systems have become more important as the pressure to

improve organizational performance has increased on line managers (Holloway,

Francis & Hinton, 1999).

Thus, effective leadership enables greater participation of the entire

workforce, which influences both individual and organizational performance (Bass,


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1997; Mullins, 1999). A good leader understands the importance of employees in

achieving the broader goals of the organization. He/she understands that to have better

organizational performance, there must be a link between the individual’s goals and

the organization’s goals. Furthermore, it is generally accepted that the effectiveness of

any set of people is largely dependent on the quality of its leadership, they facilitate

the follower’s desires, which then results in effective performance (Fiedler & House,

1988; Maritz, 1995; Ristow, et al. 1999).

2.2.3 Leadership Style and Performance

‘Fry (2003) explains leadership as the use of a leading strategy to offer

inspiring motives and to enhance the staff’s potential for growth and

development. Several reasons indicate that there should be a

relationship between leadership style and organizational performance.

The first is that today’s intensive and dynamic markets feature

innovation-based competition, price/performance rivalry, decreasing

returns, and the creative destruction of existing competencies (Santora

et al. 1999; Venkataraman, 1997). Studies have suggested that

effective leadership behaviours can facilitate the improvement of

performance when organizations face these new challenges (McGrath

& MacMillan, 2000; Teece, Pisano & Shuen, 1997).’

(cited in: Obiwuru, Okwu, Apa & Nwankwere, 2011)

As suggested by Tannenbaum & Schmidt (Cited in: Kanji, 2008), leadership

active participation in the organization through its three different forces, as shown in

Figure 2: leadership management style, team or subordinate management style, and

the situation or environment they are currently dealing with, could ensure sustainable

vision that enables them to accomplish their desired performance (Kanji, 2008, p.

420).


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Figure 2: Management

Style and

Interrelated Forces.

(Adapted from

Kanji, 2008)

As shown above, the performance of an organization and an individual are

closely connected with the leader’s ability to bring work autonomy, ensure that

employees has the appropriate knowledge, experience and the right environment and

tools to perform. Organizational performance is nothing but the ability of a corporate

to achieve certain desired objectives, such as, higher profit, higher productivity, better

customer service, better financial results and/or survive a pre-determined phase using

a well-designed strategy (Koontz & Donnell, 1993). Setting up organizations’ goals

provides higher objectives and means for the individuals to aim to, which

consequently increases enterprise performance in terms of the level of profit, market

share, product quality and so forth dependent on the type of business. An enterprise’s

productivity and performance is substantially by all individuals’ performance and

work outcomes, measured in terms of profit, productivity or customer service.

Therefore, understanding the influence of leaders on overall organizational

performance is vital, as indicated by various researchers it’s a key force to creating

improvements in organizational performance. Based on Bandura (1986), Shamir et al.

(1993) propose that some leadership styles/behaviours are viewed as effective force to


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produce and sustain performance. Similar, though not identical views were drawn by

Obiwuru et al. (2011) that leadership is perceived as an effective source to improve

and sustain management development and organizational performance (Avolio, 1999;

Lado, Boyd & Wright, 1992; Rowe, 2001). Basically, the two leadership styles we

have discussed earlier, transactional and transformational demonstrate valuable

behaviours or characteristics that persuade followers to perform better. For instance,

the inspirational motivation type of transformational leaders provides meaning and

challenges to their follower’s work, which help lift the individual and team’s spirit

and builds the desired levels of commitment and performance. On the contrary,

transactional leadership with their less ambiguity and clear structures of goals and

associated rewards helps organizations to achieve their current objectives more

effectively (Zhu, Chew & Spengler, 2005). Although many scholars suggests that

transformational leadership can result in long term commitment, loyalty and job

satisfaction. Lok & Crawford (1999) suggest that transactional leadership style could

demonstrate more positive results to commitment and job satisfaction amogest Hong

Kong managers.

Although, various evaluations have been conducted with respect to leadership

development programs (Van De Valk & Constas, 2011), there is no one formula for

effective leadership to drive organizational performance, yet, one must agree that

there are certain aspects which must be considered to reach the required level of

effectiveness of leadership. As drawn from the different articles, these can be

summarized in: creating a shared vision, communicating the vision, establishing the

sense of team work and emphasizing its importance, planning and delegating,

recognizing and rewarding, articulating new/successful behaviors and finally ensuring

leadership development and succession (Kotter, 2007). These also demonstrate


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various transactional and transformational leaders behviours and styles. At this point

we can assume that leadership certainly contributes in the success or failure of an

organization. As is shown in Figure 1 and 2, there are various aspects that shape an

organization’s performance, and a key role is played by leaders. Other aspects such as

policies and procedure, computers, systems, work environment, etc are all means that

can assist individuals to perform effectively. Leaders are believed to form and shape a

shared model that creates either a clear path in the case of transactional leadership or

clear vision, in the case of transformational leadership both of which are often seen as

important elements for employees to perform.

There is indeed a significant relationship between employees’ and

management’s leadership styles which one must adapt and focus on. So far we have

seen that transactional leadership provides and fulfils both the organization’s and

employees’ needs to some extent, whereas transformational leadership focuses on

understanding and developing common values and visions that help followers be part

of the organizational goals (Ojokuku, Odetayo, & Sajuyigbe, 2013). However,

according to House & Aditya (1997), while focusing on superior-subordinate

relationships one must not disregard other important intangible factors such as,

culture, skills and competences, motivation and most important, personality and traits.

People, structure, technology and environment are the four major forces that affect the

nature of the present workforce (Newstrom, 2007). Other scholars have also

suggested that there are gaps in the relationship between leadership and organizational

performance. Some suggest these gaps are the mediators in the relationship between

the two.

The above review of the literature, indicates that there is a fundamental

correlation between leadership and organizational performance. The relationship may


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vary from a positive to negative correlation between the two in various studies. It is

certainly hard to draw one clear model of the relationships in leadership’s impact on

performance, especially since we highlighted the gap in knowledge that remains over

the role of numerous mediators . Therefore, the intention of this dissertation is to re-

examine the proposed relationship between leadership and performance adding value

to the existing literature in this area.

2.3. Organizational culture and performance

Goffee (1997) in (McKenna, 2006) defined culture as “historically created

guides for living and collective mental programming, and these are derived from deep

assumptions that are not directly accessible but may be reflected in the values,

attitudes, and behaviour of individuals and groups”. Similarly, as stated in Deshpandé,

Farley & Webs (1993), Deshpandé & Webster (1989) reviewed a number of studies in

the field of organizational behaviour, sociology, and anthropology; defined

organizational culture as "the pattern of shared values and beliefs that help individuals

understand organizational functioning and thus provide them with the norms for

behavior in the organization" (p. 4). Another definition of organizational culture by

Moorhead and Griffin (2004) cited in (McKenna, 2006) is “set of values, often taken

for granted, that helps people in an organization understand which actions are

considered acceptable and which are considered unacceptable”. As defined by

Martine et al. (1988) cited in (Pinnington, 2012) and for the purpose of this research,

culture is “A collective (for example society, organization, group or sub-group)

interpreted for its sense of social integration, differentiation, and fragmentation”.

Cultural values as agreed by many researchers are collective efforts driven by the

leaders of the organization, which helps with aligning goals and ensures performance


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and commitment. From the above various definitions, we can conclude that

organizational culture is a collective values and patterns developed by members of a

group, usually top management, to achieve desired shared goal. As indicated by

several researches the topic of organizational culture can be clearly noticed during the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The attention given by scholars and researchers to

the topic of organizational culture is impressive, which only indicates the importance

of the notion. However, the massive number of definitions and various descriptions of

the topic have only made it more difficult and a debatable for researchers in this field.

The major reason recognised for the debate on this subject is driven by the theory of

organizational culture leading to superior organizational performance. Whereas, many

researchers argues that organization’s performance is dependent on the commitment

and understanding of the organization’s leaders and subordinates (See: Ogbonna &

Harris, 2000).

It is also important to note that although there has been various key

components indicated by researchers for the formation of the concept. Majority had

top management commitment as a crucial and common factor. While the evidence of

the relationship between leadership and performance is largely subjective,

considerably more research has examined the organizational culture–performance

relationship. Many studies have proven that an ethnographic study through a

qualitative approach is the best to find a relationship between leadership style and

culture, being such a complex context (Ofori & Toor, 2009). As stated in (Chan,

2010) “To achieve success, leaders must inspire others to work together to deliver

high-quality results. They will always have to display certain traits, such as ensuring

customer satisfaction, communicating a vision, and focusing on results (Goldsmith

2003)”.


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One of the main reasons for the claim that organizational culture is linked to

performance is perceived from the role that culture plays in generating competitive

advantage through implicit part of the employees’ values and beliefs. They suggest

that organizational culture may create competitive advantage by drawing clear path

that foster common understanding between employees that enables the individuals to

interact and take action to some extend within the supposed limitations. As stated by

McKenna (2006) “The interaction of people and culture has reinforcing qualities,

frequently resulting in committed employees”. The fact that nowadays organizations

consist of individuals with different cultural and social experiences, urge leaders to

look into the importance of understanding these differences and unifying their

organization’s culture (Ashkanasy, Hartel, & Daus, 2002). Similarly, it is argued that

a strong organizational culture has significant influence on the member’s behaviour,

simply because the core values of the culture are widely understood and embraced

(Ogbonna, 1993). On the contrary, the weaker the culture the more it is likely for

conflicts to occur between the members, due to lack of direction. As stated by

Suliman & Abdulla (2005) strong cultures would help “understanding organizational

conflict and the role it plays in influencing employee behaviour and work outcomes”.

Furthermore, researchers in this field are explicit in their claims about a

culture-performance association. Some argue that successful organizations are well-

known for their ability to promote strong cultural values which are consistent with

their overall organizational strategies (example.g. Deal & Kennedy, 1982; Ouchi,

1981; Pascale & Athos, 1981; Peters & Waterman, 1982). Some suggest that the

interaction between people and culture has a positive impact on employee

performance and commitment, however this view has been subjective and been

criticised by many.


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In the early 1990s, some researchers proposed that there is a correlation

between certain organizational cultural characteristics and performance (Gordon &

DiTomaso, 1992; and Denison, 1990). In particular, they noted that it is essential for

culture to be able to adapt to changes in environmental conditions for it to have a

significant correlation. For instance, several scholars who investigated these two

subjects reported that many mergers fail due to an insufficient understanding of the

two diverse cultures that result in organizational culture conflicts. The impression is

that, the leaders’ insufficient understanding of their own shared values and visions is

what is attributed to the failure of a merger (see: McKenna, 2006, p. 528). In fact

similar concern arises for many large organizations, having a dominant and multiple

sub-cultures, these are usually based on the structure of the organization and how

connected or separate are the various levels. The dominant culture would be the

widely shared culture among employees, whereas the sub-culture would be noticed

between groups or smaller departments. If the dominant culture is weak or not well-

understood or manifested, conflicts can arise between the two cultures. Furthermore,

researchers argue that it is not about how strong or how widely spread is the culture,

rather how exceptional is the current culture. Nevertheless, this relationship between

culture and performance remains weak (Hop•et al. 1992; Lewis, 1994; Lim, 1995;

Ray, 1986; Willmott, 1993).

The above literature provides an indication that the concept of organizational

culture is broad and emergent. Many academics, practitioners and leaders find the

concept interesting and claim that it requires further attention, mainly because they

seem to agree on the fact that there is a link between organizational culture and

performance (See Source: Ogbonna & Harris, 2000). While, the correlation between

organizational culture and organizational performance is still arguable by many


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academics, adequate evidence exists to suggest that culture can be directly or

indirectly associated with performance.

2.3.1. Leadership, Organizational Culture & Performance

In the previous sections of this literature review, we have tackled the

following topics; the relationship of leadership with individuals’ performance,

organizations’ performance and between organization culture and its relationship with

performance, in which we highlighted number of reports indicating that the

performance of an organization is highly dependent on the alignment of employee

values with the incorporated values of an organization that enables them to think Big

Picture. This suggests that these values are built and emphasised through a strong

organization culture that is usually formed by the leaders. The following is a review

of the literature on this concept.

Number of researches on the relationship of organization culture and

leadership style has been undertaken in the past; however, very few considered the

influence of it on performance. As stated in (Awan & Mahmood, 2010) “Maehr

(1990) has studied relationship between organizational culture and motivation and

concluded that culture shapes up the “psychological environment” in the

organizations”. As concluded by Lok and Crawford (1999) there are various variables

that could influence commitment and performance, including, age, pre- employment

expectations, perceived job characteristics, and the consideration dimension of

leadership style. One way of uncovering this vague relationship between culture and

leadership is to examine how culture has been conceptualized in organizational

theory.

‘Smircich (1983) identifies two approaches to the study of the cultural

phenomenon in organizations: one culture as an organizational variable, and


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second, culture seen as something which can be manipulated. Thus the nature,

direction, and impact of such manipulation are dependent on the skills and

abilities of the leader. The majority of the literature which extols the virtues of

transformational leadership demonstrates widespread support for this view (for

example, Nicholls, 1988; Quick, 1992; Simms, 1997). In contrast, if culture is

seen as an integral part of the organization, then the thinking, feeling, and

responses of leaders are moulded by the culture’ (Bass & Avolio, 1993;

Schein, 1992; See source: Ogbonna & Harris, 2000).

As argued by Larssona & Vinberg (2010) it is leaders’ leadership behaviour

with their subordinates that affects the outcome of employee work effectiveness,

productivity, quality, health and job satisfaction. It is that healthy relationship that

links the style/behaviour with individuals’ work performance. The way employees are

treated, respected and guided by their leaders builds the bridge to an effectiveness and

loyalty based culture.

Figure 3: A model of Organizational Culture Types

Adapted from: (Cameron & Freeman, 1991) and (Quinn, 1988) in (Deshpandé, Farley, &

Webs, 1993).


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‘Schein (1992) observes that organizational culture and leadership are

intertwined. He illustrates this inter-connection by looking at the

relationship between leadership and culture in the context of the

organizational life cycle. Thus, during the process of organizational

formation, the founder of a company creates an organization which

reflects their values and beliefs. In this sense, the founder creates and

shapes the cultural traits of their organization. However, as the

organization develops and time passes, the created culture of the

organization exerts an influence on the leader and shapes the actions

and style of the leader. Through this dynamic on-going process, the

leader creates and is in turn shaped by the organizational culture. “In

summarizing the consensus of opinion on the links between

organizational culture and leadership, Bass & Avolio (1993) mirror the

argument of Schein (1992) by suggesting that the relationship between

the two concepts represents an on-going interplay in which the leader

shapes the culture and is in turn shaped by the resulting culture’

(cited in Ogbonna & Harris, 2000).

If you look at Figure 3, it illustrates four classifications of organizational

culture; each of which shows variance in the degree of performance and leadership

style. There are other factors such as market competitive advantage and market

superiority, which is likely to result in better business performance than both

hierarchical and clan cultures (Deshpandé, Farley, & Webs, 1993). It is clear that

business performance can vary based on organization culture, which is as we stated

earlier, is linked with leadership style.

While examining the impact of the various leadership styles on culture, Bass

(1985) notes that transactional leaders are more inclined to operate within the

boundaries of the existing cultures, transformational leaders tend to function towards

a more dynamic vision. Although some leaders may believe in the strict enforcement

of the existing culture, many researchers believe that leaders must be open to explore

and examine new values so that they can establish a culture that adapts to the diversity

of today’s workforce. Likewise, its argues that leaders must be able to manage and

value diversity by building the required skills that enable them to change or modify


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some aspects of their culture in order to move the organization on towards better

performance.

There has been a substantial amount of research on the link between

leadership and performance as well as leadership and organizational culture, while the

link between the three concepts; leadership, culture and performance has lacked

significant attention. Hennessey suggest that leaders who demonstrate strong support

and commitment towards organizational culture, promote work effectiveness and

efficiency (See source: Ogbonna & Harris, 2000). Ogbonna & Harris examined the

concept of leadership style, organizational culture and performance in UK companies,

in which the results clearly demonstrated the associations between leadership styles

and organizational performance with organizational culture being the mediating

factor.

The above literature review sheds some light on each of the components of

this study in particular the relationship between, leadership and performance and

some light on the relationship between leadership and culture. As discussed earlier,

the three subjects have been thoroughly examined individually and in different kinds

of association, however, not so much the leadership, culture and performance linked

together. This is also suggested by Ogbonna & Harris were he states, that many

writers suggest that there is a link between the following:

‘(1) The style of a leader affects performance;

(2) Certain types of culture are linked to superior performance, and

(3) Culture and leadership are related, however, the precise nature and form of

interaction between these three concepts is not fully understood.’

(cited in Ogbonna & Harris, 2000)


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Figure 4: The links between leadership style, organizational culture and organizational

performance

Adapted from (Ogbonna & Harris, 2000)

It is suggested that objectives supports the management perform their duties

and leadership roles in the most effective and efficient way as argued by (London,

2001). We must remember that organizations comprises of people, who are diverse in

every mean, language, culture, education, knowledge, talent, background and

perspective of both life and jobs. These diverse workforces could easily attract

conflicts in the work environment. Organization mission and objectives sets basis for

the core desired goals, by establishing clear common grounds for individuals and

reducing these variances of diverse workforces. These objectives allow the

management to form a harmonized work environment and team that can perform

within the organization.

Dubrin (2007), states that there are different classes of needs, and prioritizing

those needs helps building a harmonised organization. Although, these needs may

include physical, social and egoistic, job satisfaction is often associated with human

need and condition. As leadership has always been linked to management as it

involves directing, controlling to an extent the nature, degree, extent and staging of


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activities and changes occurring within the organization. Management in business as

defined in Wikipedia is “to coordinate the efforts of people to accomplish goals and

objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Management

comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an

organization or initiative to accomplish a goal” (Wikipedia, 2014). It is imperative

that the leadership of an organization should be given adequate attention, if the

organization intends to achieve its objectives. The practice of leadership as it were,

involves taking charge and streamlining the activities of organization members to

ensure that the desired results are achieved. If you look at Figure 4, what Ogbonna &

Harris (2000) are showing is that there is a clear link between leadership style and

organizational performance if we establish an appropriate culture that supports and

fits the main organizational objective and goal. The relationship between leadership

and performance can also be found via the various factors of sharing knowledge,

values, skills, and transparency on work results, as these factors develop the

motivation and environmental psychological status of the individual that increases the

performance. As stated by Taggar, Hackew & Saha (1999, p. 900) “Leadership has

been linked to both individual performance within a team and to team performance

(Borman, 1990; Cohen, Chang, & Ledford, 1997; Kenny & Zaccaro, 1983)”.

Although the above literature does help drawing some conclusion on some of the

relationships, further studies are required in this field to identify the relationship

between organizational culture, leadership style, and performance.


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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND DIAGRAMIC MODEL OF THE

HYPOTHESIS

3. Introduction

This research follows a survey design and analysis that is based on primary

data generated through a structured questionnaire administered to a sample of

respondents. The survey instrument used in data generation is the Multifactor

Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) developed by Bass (1985) in his study: ‘Leadership

and Performance beyond Expectations’. This is the most widely used instrument for

measuring leadership styles and outcomes or effects. It comes in several different

versions. The version used in this study is the popular MLQ (Leader and Rater

version) developed by Bass & Avolio. The independent variables are the

transformational and transactional leadership styles, while the dependent variables are

performance measures for work quantity, work enthusiasm, work skills, readiness and

innovation, where they will measure the different Arab leadership styles and the

impact on employee performance in the selected small scale organizations.

The study was conducted using both quantitative and qualitative approaches.

The survey was developed based on previous studies (Bass & Avolio, 2004; Glaser,

Zamanou, & Hacker, 1987; Herscovitch & Meyer, 2002; Schrodt, 2002). This survey

was divided into three sections, the first section was the respective “Arab leaders’”

perception of their leadership style as well as the researcher’s perception, the second

section was on the employee perception of their leaders’ leadership style, and finally,

the third section was on the key factors that indicates employee performance, which

were work quantity, work enthusiasm, work skills, readiness and innovation. The

independent and dependent variables will assist in determining the relationship

between a) Arab transformational and transactional leadership styles and linking them


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to b) employee performance and c) accordingly leading to organisational

performance.

Below is the diagrammatic model (Diagram 1) of the research question that

was adapted from Kanji’s model of management style and the interrelated forces that

drive employees’ performance. It simply illustrates how leadership style shapes

organization culture and work environment, via the policies and procedures which

mediate the relationship between employee and leaders and brings in the performance

of both employee and organization.

Model 1- Diagrammatic Model of Research Questions

Adapted from (Kanji, 2008)

The next two Diagrams, adapted from Boxall & Purcell’s AMO model,

Diagram 2-3, illustrates the researcher’s proposition of the relationship between the

independent and dependent variables, explaining how the hypotheses were tested. As

shown, the independent and dependant variables will assist in determining whether a)

Arab leaders transformational leadership styles and its effect on employee

Arab Leadership

Style

Transformational

/ Transactional

Organizational

Performance

Employee

Performance


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performance, b) Arab leaders transactional leadership styles and its effect on

employee performance and c) accordingly leading to Arab leaders’ leadership style

shaping employees and organisational performance. Whereby the independent

variables such as the transformational leadership builds the individuals’ abilities/skills

to work and brings in the motivation and enthusiasm to innovate by providing the

necessary guidance and opportunity to help individuals perform (organization Model

2). Similarly Transactional leadership, would have a negative impact onindividual

performance, due to lack of guidance, support and motivations from the leaders,

which might sometime increase work quantity, but would lack the quality type of

work or even the enthusiasm and positive work environment within the organization

Model 3.

Model 2- Diagrammatic Model of Proposition 1


Model 3- Diagrammatic Model of Proposition 2


HRM: employment

policies and Practices

Leadership Style- TF

Individual:

Ability (work skill)

Motivation (readiness to innovate, enthusiasm)

Opportunity to Perform

Individual Performance

Outcomes (innovation,

quality/quantity work, etc)

HRM: employment

policies and Practices

Leadership Style - TS

Individual:

Ability (lack of work skill)

Motivation (lack of innovation, enthusiasm)

Low Opportunity to Perform

Individual Performance

Outcomes (quantity work, less quality and innovation)


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Drawn from the above Proposition are our hypothesises, as shown in the

diagram below each independent variable associate with the dependant variables of

employees’ performance in either positive or negative way. For instance, Hypothesis

one indicates that Arab leaders transformational leadership style has a positive impact

on employee performance, whereas transactional leadership style of Arab leaders has

a negative impact on employees’ overall performance. Accordingly, Arab leaders’

leadership style has an impact positive or negative on the performance of employees

within an organization.

Model 4- Diagrammatic Model of Hypothesis

3.1. Research Methods

This research study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. Both

of these research methods have their own advantages and made an important

contribution to the research as data from both methods was needed. While qualitative

methods provided insights into the underlying factors responsible for certain

behaviour or characteristics (Sinkovics, Penz & Ghauri 2004) for which interviews

methods were held, quantitative methods helps to provide exact and specific findings

which can be statistically analysed to make specific interpretations. And for this

method, a questionnaire survey was designed and distributed.

Transformational

Employee

Performance

Transactional

Leadership

Style

H3


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3.2. Qualitative Data

The qualitative data was collected through expert interviews that provided

insights into why the respondents identified themselves or wanted to identify

themselves the way they did during the MLQ for leaders rating task.

There are many reasons to use this method. In qualitative research the number

of measurement risks and concerns are on the higher side of difficulty to validate as

compared to quantitative methods and a major reason that justifies a qualitative

approach is the involvement of the researchers with the respondents and the research

process as “qualitative researchers often become immersed in the life of respondents”

(Creswell,1998). In most of the qualitative research implemented a lot of ethical

concerns arise as the data depends on personal opinions and feelings that are gathered

by the researcher. Also qualitative researchers, who design their studies and use this

method, tend to use an interpretive paradigm, which uses trustworthiness as opposed

to the conventional, positivistic criteria of internal and external validity, reliability,

and objectivity (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Padgett, 1998).

Denzin & Lincoln also suggested that these four factors can be considered to link

trustworthiness of findings from qualitative research: credibility, transferability,

dependability, and conformability. This research had a lot of emphasis on quality

rather than quantity, as the objective was not to increase numbers but to become

“saturated” with information on the topic (Padgett, 1998, p. 52). It can be concluded

that when doing qualitative research such as interviews, the results are not found in

the form of numbers or correlations but the data is built out of a large text-based data

which is collected by the researcher.


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3.2.1. Expert Interview Schedule

The expert interview schedule was especially designed for this research based

on the review of the existing literature, while the questionnaire items focused on

eliciting responses regarding the two main variables, examining the impact of

leadership style on the employees’ performance leading to Organizational

performance. The interview comprised of ten questions which were focused on the

topic. The interviews were held mostly via e-mail as both telephone calls and face-to-

face interviews could not be held as the majority of the people were travelling or had

prior appointments. Interviews take a longer time as the answers need to be elaborated

in detail and around the point. I had twenty four questions in the initial design but

then I had to reduce it to ten questions that were very specific to the topic (Appendix

E).

3.3. Quantitative Data

For the purpose of measuring leadership styles of transformational and

transactional leadership, the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) (Bass &

Avolio) was used. The MLQ survey research method has undergone various revisions

and over time managed to set clear behavioural based items that achieve excellent

validity and prediction of organizational performance. The MLQ concept has become

the benchmark measure of transformational and transactional leadership. It provides a

contrast between how the leaders perceive themselves versus how others perceive

them. In this research the perceptions of the researcher and employees forms critical

feedback to the leader and a measure based on which the researcher would provide a

basis for growth and change. The quantitative data, collected through the

administration of questionnaires enabled the provision of exact findings, and helped


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the researcher to understand the degree of differences in perception caused by the

independent variables under study. The results obtained through both quantitative and

qualitative techniques were corroborated with each other and the final analysis based

on findings was produced. As stated by Thomas (1997), this type of data is mainly

numerical and it is very time consuming as data needs to be calculated statistically

and then interpreted using software that will be able to break the data into tables and

then be able to graphically represent that data. This is important for the researcher to

do so that the readers are able to understand this numerical data and is the best form

of data analysis for MLQ.

3.3.1. Questionnaire Design

On one hand, the researcher had the questionnaire for the leaders’ self-rating

that was made up to twenty four questions on top of the interview questions that was

mentioned earlier. On the other hand, there was the employee questionnaire that

contained up to forty one questions. The questionnaire was able to provide

quantitative results that are easily analysed and interpreted. The reason for choosing

questionnaires was the ease of designing it with an average of twenty four multiple

choice questions and also for the reason that it would not occupy a lot of the

participant’s time to complete and return it. The fact that it is filled anonymously

makes the data more reliable to work with increasing confidence that the data are not

biased.

Therefore, questions in the questionnaire are those relating to Arab leadership

style or behaviour and performance as measured by transformational and transactional

behaviours and work quantity, work enthusiasm, work skills and readiness and

innovation. These variables are a combination of Bass (1990) and House et al (1997)


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as well as Suliman’s (2001) proposals. This study operationalizes these variables to

evaluate the effect of Arab leadership style or behaviour on the performance of small

scale organizations of one holding company. In the MLQ, each independent variable

is given equal weight. Each research statement has five potential responses, ranging

from “Not at all” to “Frequently if not always” and is scaled from 0 to 4 for the

leadership style and for the performance factors the ranging is from “strongly

disagree” to “strongly agree” and is scaled from 0 to 4.

Copies of the questionnaire were distributed to the respondents with

instructions on how to fill them out. Altogether, four entities participated under the

survey, requesting a minimum of 50 responses of each and all were returned filled out

completely, giving a return rate of 100%. The reason for the high return rate in some

entities was that the researcher personally visited the entities and explained the

requirement, assuring the participants that the responses will remain anonymous and

was for the purpose of the researcher’s study only. Also, the highly recognized

support from top management was another factor for the high response rate.

Although, due to the fact that the research was conducted in June, the responses

gathered in the first round was not sufficient. So we needed to request more responses

via emailing the human resources department, which was very supportive.

3.3.2. Requirements of Questionnaire

The study required a questionnaire especially designed to incorporate the

variables this study was desired to address. The questionnaire designed for this

research was a combination of two different methods used in previous studies

conducted by various researchers. As the concept of the study was explored by many

other researchers in the past, it gave the researcher confidence in the approach.


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Although, the specified variables for this research might have not been used in

relation to each other, the purpose of this research was not to find a new technique as

much as to address the concept of the research topic.

Apart from the questionnaire, the respondents’ availability will be an added

issue to deal with. Cross cultural studies conducted earlier have not been easy given

the nature of the research and the vast number of issues and cultural differences

involved (Tan, McCullough & Teoh 1987). In this study, the requirement of

respondent time will need to be paid special attention to.

After the questionnaire has been administered to the respondents, the data

obtained was examined statistically and the interview responses were also content

analysed. The results were presented in the form of graphs by using SPSS and MS-

Excel and interpreted along with presenting the limitations of the results and

suggestions for future research.

3.3.3. Data Collection

The data was collected through the standardized questionnaire instrument that

was composed of two parts. The first part measures the demographics which include

age, gender, time spent in the current position and total tenure. The second part

measures both the independent and dependent variables which include organization

performance, which is hypothesized to be influenced by leadership styles and its

impact on employee performance. The researcher examined the independent

variables, which is leadership style, using two methods (qualitative and quantitative).

Using three categories to examine, first, the researcher personally interviewed the

selected leaders for the research. Second, the researcher used Bass & Avolio MLQ

Leaders Questionnaire version for leaders to self-rate their leadership style and the


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MLQ questionnaire rater’s version, was used for requesting employees to rate their

leaders. So in addition to the interviews, leadership styles (transactional and

transformational) were also measured by a survey developed by Bass & Avolio; that

was designed to describe leadership style as perceived by the leader and by their

employees. The researcher along with the HR practitioner’s recommendations

indicated the person (leader) that needed to be rated and those who were required to

complete the “leader rating” or “employees rating” version of the survey. Finally,

with regard to measuring the employee’s performance the researcher used question

items designed by Suliman (2001) and attached it as section two under the employees’

rating questionnaires.

3.4. Process of the Sample

Different people whom the researcher knew were contacted via phone or via

emails in UAE to distribute the questionnaire. Once the questionnaires were approved

by the entity’s HR’s representative, the researcher visited the entities personally and

explained the purpose of the questionnaire. Around 400 people were contacted in two

months’ time and out of the 400 only 250 responded. Some of the questionnaires

around 30, were not completed, therefore, they had to be removed.

The questionnaires and the interviews were sent via e-mail in June and early

July and the respondents were requested to answer in one week’s time due to the

submission deadline for this thesis which was the second week of November. The

questionnaire and the interviews were sent to the human resources department, who

organised the session for the researcher. Later the researcher met with people of all

nationalities under one group/holding company, and explained what was required to

get the surveys completed. This approach was better as it gave the employees


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confidence that their responses were not tracked and not intended for any official use

by the employer. The fact that June and July months are known to be used for summer

holidays, most of the people were on leave and there was a delay in getting the

number of survey returns required for the research. Hence, a few questionnaires were

sent via email later in October, the questionnaire sent via e-mail was accompanied

with a covering letter so the respondents were aware of what they should do.

3.4.1. Questionnaire Content

The validity and reliability of the questionnaire content depended on the

question items being adhered to, keeping in mind that the UAE is a very modern and

outgoing country. Direct questions where designed to answer two main research

questions (Appendix E):

1. Arab Leaders leadership style;

2. Leadership style as predictors toward organizational culture and employee

performance.

3.4.2. Interview Content

An effective and efficient way to collect and gather accurate qualitative data is

by using the method of interviewing. Interviews help collect data that are interesting

for the research and play a vital role in addressing some key questions and issues.

According to Opdenakker (2006), there are four main ways of conducting an

interview, which are: Face-to-Face, Live Messenger (MSN, Google, Skype, etc.),

Telephone and E-mail. The table given below shows four methods of interview

divided as per the synchronous and asynchronous communication in time and place.


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Table# 3.1: The Four Interview Methods

Type of

Communication

Time Place

Synchronous

communication

Face-to-Face,

Live Messenger (MSN,

Google, Skype, etc.),

Telephone

Face-to-Face,

Asynchronous

communication

E-mail E-mail

Live Messenger (MSN,

Google, Skype, etc.),

Telephone

Adapted from: Opdenakker (2006, p. 2)

Interviews that were sent by e-mail also known as e-mail interviews do have

some advantages which are very basic. E-mail interviews as stated by Brampton &

Colton (2002, paragraph 25) "provides a limited register for communication" which is

true in many ways and that is why a lot of researchers prefer face-to-face interviews

as they are held in reality and the researchers are able to know the answer on the spot

as the interviewees’ expressions are observed. For this research, the questions used for

the interview were straightforward and there was no intention to frustrate any

interviewee that was willing to help. In addition to that, in this research as mentioned

before I was able to use a combination of face-to-face and e-mail interviews to obtain

the data as rapidly as possible, based on the individual’s availability. Another major

reason for not conducting all interviews face-to-face and on Live messenger was due

to the lack of respondents present in all entities of the holding company as it was

during the summer and most of them travelled and did not want to be disturbed.

Additionally, telephone interviews were somewhat hard to conduct since I could not

get hold of many people and also the fact that the interviewees were not native


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English speakers which could have led to miscommunication and the purpose of

telephone interview would not have been met.

There were various issues faced due to the nature of the asynchronous

communication of time there were delays in the responses for which reminders were

sent to people to send the answers. Therefore, choosing to e-mail the interview was

arguably the most appropriate decision since this helped with collecting responses

quicker than the face-to-face method. The interview questions were simple and

straightforward and specific to the leadership styles used in the companies. All ten

questions were concise so that respondents were likely to have answers as soon as

they read the questions. Each question was different and none of the questions were

repeated. These facts ensured that the interviewees would be able to answer the

questions themselves and remain motivated to do so until the end.

3.5. Content Analysis

As stated by Krippendorff (1980), “there are six basic questions that must be

answered in a content analysis which are given below:

1) Which data are analysed?

2) How are they defined?

3) What is the population from which they are drawn?

4) What is the context relative to which the data are analysed?

5) What are the boundaries of the analysis?

6) What is the target of the inferences?

The primary data that needed to be gathered was only possible when a proper and

professional questionnaire was designed and distributed to the respondents in all

entities and collected back.


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It is very important to mention that the analysis of the questionnaires is very

different from the analysis of the interviews and these were done separately as data

from interviews were all qualitative while data from questionnaires were all

quantitative.

3.6. SPSS Analysis

Data present in the form of quantitative research that is collected when using

questionnaires to collect data requires a specialised software program known as SPSS.

SPSS, known as the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, and is used by almost

every university student and universities to record data into the program in order to

get the required statistical analysis. It is a very useful and important collection of

software programs as it is able to provide some tests that help to validate the statistical

significance of the results. This research does not involve any arithmetical or

numerical data with a specific rate or equations, but only categorical which are

nominal in nature. Due to this reason only non-parametric tests are more specific, and

the best way to study the correlation between two variables is to use the Pearson's

correlation test. This is one of the most valid tests for the analysis of ordinal data as it

compares the linear relationship between two variables. To test for independence,

Pearson’s Chi-square can be used for categorical (i.e. ordinal or nominal) data, it

compares the frequencies to the expected frequencies for each cell in the table.

The data was then fed into a tabular format and then these tables were

exported to MS-Excel software where the graphs were interpreted. Each graph

represents the data that was fed into the table.


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3.7. Difficulties and Mitigation Methods

The main difficulties in this task rose when obtaining the responses from the

desired number of men and women in each of the four categories of respondents. The

number of questionnaires likely to be invalid/ incomplete or wasted contributed to the

rising costs of conducting this research. Also the use of both quantitative and

qualitative data made this entire research study a relatively time-consuming exercise.

To mitigate this difficulty, incidental sampling was used; the human resources

departments were contacted again through e-mails to provide further responses to fill

in the gaps of number of respondents for the research.

3.8. Professional, Legal and Ethical Issues

The nature of the research being what it is, that is the evaluation of people’s

perception of their leaders’ style/behaviour by male and female respondents across

different cultures will not involve any professional or legal issues. Also respondents

answered questions in their private capacity and only willing respondents were

requested to respond to the questionnaire.

However all research has an ethical perspective and ethical considerations

such as giving the respondents complete information and preserving the

confidentiality of their responses will be certainly followed. The ethical

considerations have been considered to be of great importance as in all research work.

The next chapter will provide detailed analysis of the research findings,

interpreting the data collected using SPSS software and then presenting them in a

tabular and graphical form by using MS-Excel software.


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CHAPTER 4: MAIN FINDINGS AND DATA ANALYSIS

4. Introduction

The previous chapters detailed the methodology of the research and reviewed

the literature in relation to leadership style, culture and performance of both

organization and employees. The concept presented in the previous chapters is tested

by investigating the relationship between Arab leadership style and employee

performance in four small scale entities of a holding organization. This chapter will

provide descriptive statistics of the data collected, as well as the results of the

reliability analysis.

4.1 Leaders Data Analysis

4.1.1 Qualitative Data

The four selected participants for this research are from the top management

of the holding companies, who are not only in the position of Chief Operating

Officers of their respective entities but also are board members of several other

entities/ organizations. Set of questions were formulated to understand these Arab

leaders leadership style, and test them as predictors driving employee’s performance.

Based on the responses we received, it is noticed that the majority of

respondents has some basic understanding and knowledge of the term leadership.

They haven’t been direct responses as transformational or transactional leadership

style; however, we were able to derive leadership style from the responses. For

example, as stated by the organization A CEO “I believe in leading by example” and

“leaders are individuals who can effectively inspire their teams” these indicates

behaviours of transformational leaders, with tendency of both idealized and

inspirational type of behaviours. He also demonstrated a few individualised leadership


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behaviours, as he stated “employee engagement is very essential” and his values of

integrity, accountability and empowerment all present’s optimistic visions such as in

transformational leaders style. He also mentioned importance of building the talent

pool and identifying potential future leaders.

The B organisation CEO had similar views as the A organisation CEO, with

tendency to have more of individualised and team spirit behaviours. As stated under

his leadership style, “one team all are responsible for each other”, most of the

statements by him included terms such as, team, inspire, creative, potential, feedback.

He has an open door policy and asserted his belief in open communication.

Unlike the previous two CEOs, the C organisation Chief Operating Officer

indicated a mix of transformational and transactional behaviours. On one hand he

showed some idealized and individualised attributes, such as delegation, coaching and

trust. At the same time, he seemed very results-oriented, as his success measures are,

overall team achievement. On the other hand, he indicated some constructive and

corrective behaviour. For instance, he believes in meeting employees when a problem

occurs or assistance is required. Also he believes in setting clear standards to meet

plans as well as compliance which then get evaluated with the overall outcomes of

employee’s performance.

The D organisation entity CEO, showed more transactional leadership

behaviour. Although he identified his approach as trust and empowerment, the fact

that he didn’t necessarily see the need to meet his subordinates except when needed as

they are provided with necessary guidance and tools to function accordingly,

indicated management-by-exception behaviour of transactional leadership.

Understanding the nature of the Chief Operating Officer’s job, he tends to travel often

from one operating country to another, which makes it difficult to have the emotional


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touch of transformational leadership behaviour with the employees. Whereby, major

communications takes place via the various available technologies (i.e. phone, emails,

blackberry and so forth).

Each of the above leaders had indicated different behaviours under each

leadership style, giving us room to evaluate the meaning of the data collected in a

more effective manner.

4.1.2 Summary of the Data Collected

The data is collected from the four entity’s leaders; the average age of

participants is 46 being 100% male. As presented in Table 4.1 of the leader’s

frequency, the majority of leaders believe they have more of the transformational

behaviour than the transactional leadership style.

Table 4.1: Descriptive Statistics of Leaders Ratings

N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Deviation

Idealized 4 2.67 4.00 3.1667 .57735

Individualized 4 1.67 2.67 2.2500 .41944

Inspirational 4 1.33 2.67 1.9167 .56928

Intellectual 4 2.00 2.67 2.3333 .27217

Contingent Reward 4 .00 .33 .0833 .16667

Active 4 3.00 4.00 3.2500 .50000

Passive 4 2.00 2.75 2.3750 .32275

Valid N (listwise) 4

Each behavior had set of three attributes that would indicate the specified

behavior for the leader. The reliability test showed reliable data for two leadership

behaviours (idealized, individualized) and inspirational behaviours being average

(Cronbach’s alpha value is 0.686), but under the commonly applied .7 or .8 thresholds

for reliability, as shown below in Table 4.2. Initially the first run of reliability test did

not indicate reliable result for the individualised behaviour, for the second run one of


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the behaviours had to be removed to reach a highly reliable result. Whereas the

Intellectual leadership behaviour showed a weak reliability result (Cronbach’s alpha

value is 0.421).

Table 4.2: The reliability result for transformational behaviours factors of leaders

rating

Leadership Behaviours Standard Deviation

Cronbach's

Alpha

Transformational – Idealized 3 0.917

Transformational - Individualized 2 0.800

Transformational – Inspirational 3 0.686

Transformational – Intellectual 2 0.421

Table 4.3: The Reliability results for Transactional behaviours factors of leaders rating

Leadership Behaviours Standard Deviation Cronbach's Alpha

Transactional - Contingent Reward 2 0.727

Transactional - Management-by-exception (active) 4 1.00

Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive) 3 0.500

The data also showed high reliability for active management behaviour at

(Cronbach alpha value is 1.00) and contingent reward behaviour being (Cronbach

alpha value is 0.727) under transactional leadership style of Arab leaders as shown

above in Table 4.3.

4.2 Employees Rating Data Analysis

4.2.1 Demographic Summary

The data is collected from four different line of business under one holding

company. Below is a combined demographic summary presented in Table 4.4, which

shows that the median age of the participants was between 25-35 years, 55.7 percent


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of which are female, majority being from the middle level of management, and has

job tenure of minimum two to seven years. Also as shown the educational

qualification of the participants was between higher diploma and a bachelor degree.

Also having somewhat a balanced nationality ratio gives us higher reliability that the

respondent weren’t biased toward their leaders. In general the collected data shown in

Table 4.4 below indicate that generally we have a diverse set of backgrounds covering

a wide range of age group, educational background and nationality, total statistics can

be found in Appendix A.


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Table 4.4 Demographic

General Info Gender Marital

status Education Age

Organizational

Tenure

Job

Tenure

Job

Level Nationality Entity

Male 94

Female 118

Married 112

Unmarried 100

Less than high

school 6

High School 25

Higher Diploma

80

Bachelor 55

Masters & above

46

Less than 25 5

25 to 35 78

36 to 46 58

47 to 57 65

58 & above 6

one year or less

13

2 to 7 years 98

8 to 13 years 87

14 to 19 years 14

20 years or

above 0

one year or less

12

2 to 7 years 105

8 to 13 years 87

14 to 19 years 8

20 years or

above 0

First level 21

Middle level 108

Lower level 83

UAE National 98

Non UAE

National 114

Org- A 65

Org- B 50

Org- C 50

Org- D 47

Total 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212


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4.2.2 Reliability

A Reliability test was conducted to estimate the reliability of our data from the

MLQ test. A total of seven leadership factors were used as demonstrated in both

Table 4.6 and 4.7 of transactional and transformational leadership behaviours. As

mentioned earlier, four leaders were involved in the survey and 212 participants of

mixture of different nationalities, ages and genders.

4.2.2.1 Leadership independent variable reliability:

The results in Table 4.5 below indicate that the MLQ factors generally are

reliable, for details of result refer to Appendix B. It is noted that there are different

leadership behaviours in Arab leaders as per the result of the collected data. Although

as shown below it seems that there are more transactional leadership style in Arab

leaders (Cronbach’s alpha value is 0.938) than the transformational leadership style,

the Cronbach’s alpha value of Inspirational and Intellectual leadership behaviours are

found to be highly reliable as is shown in Table 4.6.

Table 4.5: The reliability result for both transformational and transactional factors

Leadership Factors Standard Deviation Cronbach's Alpha

Transformational Leadership 12 0.885

Transactional Leadership 12 0.938

Table 4.6: The reliability result for transformational behaviours factors


Transformational - Idealized 3 0.68

Transformational - Individualized 3 0.694

Transformational - Inspirational 2 0.872

Transformational - Intellectual 3 0.782


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Furthermore, the reliability test for transactional leadership behaviour showed

highly reliable results for two factors, highest for Transactional - Management-by-

exception (active) being (Cronbach’s alpha value is 0.958) as shown in Table 4.7.

Table 4.7: The reliability result for transactional behaviours factors


Transactional - Contingent Reward 3 0.689

Transactional - Management-by-exception (active) 4 0.958

Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive) 4 0.933

4.2.2.2 Performance dependent variable reliability:

Similarly as illustrated in Table 4.8, the reliability test was conducted to

estimate the reliability of the employee performance factors. As illustrated below, the

Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for the four factors of performance can be

considered (i.e. quantity of work, work enthusiasm, work skills and readiness to

innovation) all are higher than 0.8 which indicates that it is reliable.

Table 4.8: The reliability test for both work performance factors

Employee Performance Factors No of Items Cronbach's Alpha

Quantity of Work 4 0.81

Work enthusiasm 4 0.983

Work Skills 4 0.955

Readiness to innovate 5 0.874

4.2.3 Correlation

New variables has been generated using the function “Compute” to calculate

the values for the transactional and transformational variables which are composed

out of several question items. Then the correlation analysis has been run on the

computed variables for each leadership behaviour. The empirical results of the


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research show that there is a high relationship between Arab transformational leaders

and the employees’ performance. Table 4.9 presents the correlations among the

independent variables of leadership style and the dependent variables of employee

performance. As shown, there is a significant correlation between all four

transformational leadership styles and performance factors, except for inspirational

leadership and work skills. Having said that, there is a significant association between

the other three leadership behaviours and work skills at (.196**; .272**; .216**).

Similarly significant correlations were found between the idealized and individualized

behaviours and work enthusiasm, at 0.533** and 0.436**. This provides support for

our first hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between Arab leader’s

transformational leadership and employee’s performance.

From Table 4.9 it is also evident that there is a significant negative

relationship between transactional leadership (management-by-exception passive) and

all four employee performance variables. There is also a negative relationship

between transactional leadership style (management-by-exception active) which is

significant at the 1% level of confidence for three of the performance variables and at

the 5% level for work skills. Interestingly, transactional leadership (contingent

reward) is also significantly associated for 3 of the performance variables with only

quantity of work positive (but non-significant).


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Table 4.9: The correlation between the Transformational leadership behaviours and performance

TR -

Idealized

TR -

Individualized

TR -

Inspirational

TR -

Intellectual

TS -

Contingent Reward

TS -

Management-

by-exception (active)

TS -

Management-

by-exception (passive)

Quantity of Work

Work

Enthusiasm

Work Skills

Readiness

to Innovate

Transformational

- Idealized

Pearson

Correlation

Sig. (2-tailed) N 212

Transformational

- Individualized

Pearson

Correlation

.775**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000

N 212 212

Transformational

- Inspirational

Pearson

Correlation

.458** .439**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000

N 212 212 212

Transformational

- Intellectual

Pearson

Correlation

.522** .558** .871**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212

Transactional -

Contingent

Reward

Pearson

Correlation

-.039 -.125 -.073 -.069

Sig. (2-tailed) .570 .068 .291 .319

N 212 212 212 212 212

Transactional - Management-by-

exception (active)

Pearson Correlation

-.782** -.695** -.519** -.549** .307**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212


exception

(passive)

Pearson Correlation

-.806** -.703** -.510** -.538** .271** .946**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Quantity of Work Pearson Correlation

.509** .565** .573** .700** .047 -.490** -.480**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .495 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Work

Enthusiasm

Pearson

Correlation

.533** .436** .349** .354** -.139* -.587** -.615** .336**

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .043 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Work Skills Pearson

Correlation

.196** .272** .129 .216** -.212** -.164* -.212** .346** .016

Sig. (2-tailed) .004 .000 .061 .002 .002 .017 .002 .000 .822

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Readiness to

Innovate

Pearson

Correlation

.532** .475** .526** .597** -.135* -.630** -.622** .489** .375** .174*

Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .000 .000 .049 .000 .000 .000 .000 .011

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).


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4.2.4. Regression

The study aimed at investigating the relationship between employee

performance and Arab leadership in four separate entities of one holding company.

First, the function “COMPUTE” was generated to calculate the values for both

dependent and independent variables which are composed out of several question

items to form one set for each tested variable. Then, a factor analysis was run for the

computed transformational, transaction and performance variables. Accordingly, the

below component analysis was generated, which indicated three factor analysis for

each of the variables.

Table 4.10: The Rotated Component Matrix

Component

1 2 3

Transformational – Idealized .775 .396 -.033

Transformational – Individualized .647 .458 -.172

Transformational – Inspirational .318 .780 .031

Transformational – Intellectual .328 .855 -.035

Transactional - Contingent Reward -.303 .238 .743

Transactional - Management-by-exception (active) -.874 -.311 .188

Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive) -.876 -.314 .193

Quantity of Work .249 .815 -.098

Work Enthusiasm .762 .109 .080

Work Skills -.104 .385 -.777

Readiness to Innovate .522 .518 -.097

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis.

Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.

a. Rotation converged in 6 iterations.

From the above table we were able to draw the following interpretation to

evaluate and support our regression analysis. As shown in Table 4.11, we first named

each component based on the fact that it presented. Accordingly, component one was


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named Individualized Vision, as it represented the two transformational variables that

indicated a highly positive relationship between idealized .775 and individualized

.647 leadership behaviors and work enthusiasm and employees readiness to innovate.

Whereas, both active and passive transactional leadership style shown significantly

negative relationship, at -.874 and -.876, with employee performance. The second

component was titled Intellectual Inspiration, due to the fact that a positive

relationship was found between inspirational .780 and intellectual .855 leadership

behaviors and quantity of work and readiness to innovate. Finally, the third

component that was a surprising result, shown that there is a negative relationship

between contingent reward behavior and employees work skills therefore this factor

was named Readiness to Learn.

Table 4.11: The Rotated Component Tested Factors Matrix

Factor Analysis

Component

Individualized Vision

Intellectual Inspiration

Readiness to

Learn New Skills

Transformational – Idealized .775

Transformational – Individualized .647

Transformational – Inspirational

.780

Transformational – Intellectual

.855

Transactional - Contingent Reward

.743

Transactional - Management-by-exception (active) -.874

Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive) -.876

Quantity of Work

.815

Work Enthusiasm .762

Work Skills

-.777

Readiness to Innovate .522 .518

Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.


Finally for further clarification on the relationship between Arab leadership

style and employee’s work performance two regression tests were conducted as

represented in Table 4.12. The regression analysis was tested against the previously

presented factor analysis. Both linear regression and logistic regression were used to


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establish a relationship between the dependent and independent variables. Linear

regression test is useful in estimating the resultant dependent variable in relation to

independent variables changes, whereas, logistic or binary logistic regression is used

to ascertain the probability of an event, which is captured in binary format.

Table 4.12: Linear Regression and Binary Logistic Regression Matrix

Regression Component

Quantity of

Work

Work

Enthusiasm

Work Skills Readiness to

Innovate

Transformational - Idealized * ** Transformational - Individualized ** * ** * Transformational - Inspirational * * Transformational - Intellectual * * * * Transactional - Contingent Reward Transactional - Management-by-exception (active)

*

Transactional - Management-by-exception

(passive)

* indicates Linear Regression

* indicates Binary Logistic Regression

** indicates combination of Linear Regression and Binary Logistic Regression

The above table shows a combination of linear and logistic regression matrix,

designed keeping in mind the three factor analysis produced earlier. The regression

analysis indicated a significant relationship between both individualised and idealised

leadership skills and employees work enthusiasm as well as their readiness to

innovate. This supports our first factor, Individualized vision, were both linear and

logistic regressions indicates significant relationship between idealized leadership

behaviours and the ability of employees to maintain enthusiasm and perform in an

innovative manner. In fact the regression analysis also, indicated highly significant

relationship between individualised behaviour of transformational leadership and the

employees’ quantity of work. Second factor, intellectual inspiration, has also shown a

positive relationship with employees work skills, general enthusiasm and their

readiness to innovate. Finally the third factor, readiness to learn, has not been


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satisfied, although the factor analysis shows highly significant relation between

employees readiness to learn new skills if it was associated with reward.

Multiple regression analysis was used to examine the three main factors

established from the factor analysis as shown in Table 4.11, this should also supports

our three main hypotheses. Below are the results of the regression analyses as

demonstrated in Tables 4.13 to 4.18.

Table 4.13 – Regression Analysis between Individualized Idealized Leadership Style and

Readiness to innovate

Model Summary

Model R R

Square

Adjusted R

Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

Change Statistics

R Square

Change

F Change df1 df2 Sig. F

Change

1 .532a .283 .280 .432 .283 83.014 1 210 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Idealized

ANOVAa

Model Sum of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.

1

Regression 15.499 1 15.499 83.014 .000b

Residual 39.209 210 .187

Total 54.708 211

a. Dependent Variable: Readiness to Innovate

b. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Idealized

Coefficientsa

Model Unstandardized

Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations

B Std.

Error

Beta Zero-order Partial Part

1

(Constant) -.028 .313 -.088 .930

Transformational -

Idealized .992 .109 .532 9.111 .000 .532 .532 .532



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Table 4.14 – Regression Analysis between Individualized Idealized Leadership Style and

Work Enthusiasm

Model Summary

Model R R

Square

Adjusted

R Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

Change Statistics

R Square

Change


Change

1 .533a .284 .281 .402 .284 83.309 1 210 .000


ANOVAa


1

Regression 13.441 1 13.441 83.309 .000b

Residual 33.880 210 .161

Total 47.321 211

a. Dependent Variable: Work Enthusiasm


Coefficientsa


Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations

B Std.

Error

Beta Zero-

order

Partial Part

1 (Constant) .303 .291 1.043 .298

Transformational - Idealized .924 .101 .533 9.127 .000 .533 .533 .533


Excluded Variablesa

Model Beta In t Sig. Partial

Correlation

Collinearity Statistics

Tolerance

1 Transformational -

Individualized .057b .619 .536 .043 .400


b. Predictors in the Model: (Constant), Transformational - Idealized


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Table 4.15 – Regression Analysis between Management-by-exception (Active/Passive)

Leadership Style and Work Enthusiasm

Model Summary

Model R R

Square

Adjusted

R Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

Change Statistics

R Square

Change

F

Change

df1 df2 Sig. F Change

1 .615a .378 .376 .374 .378 127.875 1 210 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive)

ANOVAa


1

Regression 17.909 1 17.909 127.875 .000b

Residual 29.411 210 .140

Total 47.321 211


b. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive)

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations

B Std.

Error

Beta Zero-

order

Partial Part

1

(Constant) 3.161 .032 98.418 .000

Transactional -

Management-by-

exception (passive)

-.265 .023 -.615 -11.308 .000 -.615 -.615 -.615


Excluded Variablesa


Correlation


Tolerance

1

Transactional -

Management-by-exception

(active)

-.045b -.269 .789 -.019 .104


b. Predictors in the Model: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive)


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Table 4.16 – Regression Analysis between Management-by-exception (Active/Passive)

Leadership Style and Innovation

Model Summary

Model R R

Square

Adjusted

R Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

Change Statistics

R Square

Change

F Change df1 df2 Sig. F Change

1 .630a .397 .394 .396 .397 138.060 1 210 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (active)

ANOVAa


1

Regression 21.700 1 21.700 138.060 .000b

Residual 33.008 210 .157

Total 54.708 211


b. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (active)

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations

B Std.

Error

Beta Zero-

order

Partial Part

1

(Constant) 3.007 .032 93.762 .000

Transactional -

Management-by-exception

(active)

-.276 .023 -.630 -11.750 .000 -.630 -.630 -.630


Table 4.17 – Regression Analysis between Intellectual Inspiration Leadership Style and

Quantity of Work

Model Summary

Model R R

Square

Adjusted

R Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

Change Statistics

R Square

Change

F Change df1 df2 Sig. F Change

1 .700a .490 .487 .280 .490 201.517 1 210 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Intellectual


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ANOVAa


1

Regression 15.850 1 15.850 201.517 .000b

Residual 16.517 210 .079

Total 32.366 211

a. Dependent Variable: Quantity of Work

b. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Intellectual

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations

B Std. Error Beta Zero-order Partial Part

1

(Constant) .638 .153 4.176 .000

Transformational -

Intellectual .699 .049 .700 14.196 .000 .700 .700 .700


Excluded Variablesa


Correlation


Tolerance


Inspirational -.151b -1.507 .133 -.104 .242


b. Predictors in the Model: (Constant), Transformational - Intellectual

Table 4.18 – Regression Analysis between Intellectual Inspiration Leadership Style and

Readiness to innovate

Model Summary

Model R R

Square

Adjusted

R Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

Change Statistics

R Square Change F Change df1 df2 Sig. F Change

1 .597

a .356 .353 .410 .356 116.009 1 210 .000


ANOVAa


1

Regression 19.468 1 19.468 116.009 .000b

Residual 35.240 210 .168

Total 54.708 211




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Coefficientsa


Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations

B Std.

Error

Beta Zero-

order

Partial Part

1

(Constant) .424 .223 1.899 .059

Transformational -

Intellectual .774 .072 .597 10.771 .000 .597 .597 .597


Table 4.19 – Regression Analysis between Contingent Reward Leadership Style and

Work Skills

Model Summary

Model R R

Square

Adjusted

R Square

Std. Error of

the Estimate

Change Statistics

R Square

Change


Change

1 .212a .045 .040 .348 .045 9.860 1 210 .002

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Contingent Reward

ANOVAa


1

Regression 1.194 1 1.194 9.860 .002b

Residual 25.435 210 .121

Total 26.630 211

a. Dependent Variable: Work Skills

b. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Contingent Reward

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations

B Std.

Error

Beta Zero-

order

Partial Part

1

(Constant) 3.629 .246 14.727 .000

Transactional - Contingent

Reward -.261 .083 -.212 -3.140 .002 -.212 -.212 -.212



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Three scenarios were designed to support our three main research hypotheses;

based on which the multiple regression test was conducted. Below are the three

Hypotheses:

Hypothesis1. There is a positive relationship between Arab leader transformational

leadership and employee performance.

Hypothesis2. There is a negative relationship between Arab leader transactional

leadership and employee performance.

Hypothesis3. Arab leadership styles (transformational and transactional) impact the

employee’s performance.

The multiple regression analysis test was conducted in support of our

previously conducted correlation test as well as to help us predict the accuracy of our

hypothesises. Leadership styles were used as the independent variables whereas the

employee performance was the dependant variables. As shown in Table 4.13, the first

table provided is the summary of the model that gives us the value of R and R2 for the

model. As shown R value is 53% and the value of Adjusted R2 is 28%, which tells us

that idealized style of leadership can account for 28% of the variation in employee’s

readiness to innovate. Whereas the R2 value is 28.3%, which implies a variance of

only 0.3%. Next is the ANOVA table output, this reports an analysis of variance

between the dependant and independent variables (Fields, 2013). For this test, F value

is 83.014 (p<0.001), which indicates significant prediction of positive relationship

between idealized leadership and employee’s readiness to innovate. This is also

supported by the standardized Coefficients of B value of 0.532(p<0.001) shown in the

coefficients table, which tells us that the regression model overall predict a significant

positive relationship between some of the idealised leadership style and employee’s

ability to innovate.


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Table 4.14 provides the predicted relationship between Individualized

Idealized Leadership Style and Work Enthusiasm. The model has excluded the

individualised leadership style from the independent variables as there was weaker

partial correlation with employee's work enthusiasm at 0.043 and a larger collinearity

tolerance at 0.400 with the idealised independent variable. Therefore the result of the

multiple regression analysis as shown in the model summary shows that 53.3% of

employee’s work enthusiasm is due to idealised leadership style in Arab leaders. With

an F Change value of 83.309 (p<0.001) indicating a significantly high relationship

between the dependent and independent variables. Furthermore, the coefficients

results showed a Beta value of .924, indicating a positive relationship between

idealised style and employee’s work enthusiasm. Moreover, the idealised leadership,

t(209)= .924, p<0.001), indicates a significant predictor of employee’s work

enthusiasm (212-2-1=209) with a significant positive contribution of a Beta value of

.533 (p<0.001). The above two tests provides a support to our H1, indicating a

significant relationship between some of our transformational leadership styles and

employee performance.

The multiple regression analysis presented in Table 4.15 between

management-by-exception (active/passive) leadership style and work enthusiasm

indicated significant relationship between the dependant and independent variables at

R value of 61.5%. Furthermore, Adjusted R2 value of 37.6%, tells us that

management-by-exception (active/passive) styles of leadership can account for

approximate 38% of employee’s work enthusiasm with a variance of only 0.2% less

in the outcome (37.8%-37.6%=0.2%). It has also reported an F-ratio of 127.875

(p<0.001) predicting a significant relationship between transactional leadership style

and employees work enthusiasm. This findings are consistent with the Pearson


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correlation test which found that there is a significantly negative relationship between

both active and passive leadership styles (-.587**, -.615**) and employees work

enthusiasm. It is also important to report that the regression test excluded the active

management style due to the high collinearity among the independent variables

(.946**) as reported earlier in the correlation test.

Another multiple regression test was run to predict the relationship between

management-by-exception (active/passive) leadership style and employee’s readiness

to innovate. As shown in Table 4.16, this transactional leadership style accounts for

39.4% of employee’s performance. The F-ratio value 138.060 (p<0.001) implies that

the model significantly improves the prediction of the relationship between

transactional management-by-exception active style and employees ability to

innovate. In addition, the results indicates that the relationship is significantly

negative showing Beta value of -.630 (p<0.001), which is also consistent with the

Pearson correlation test which found that there is a significantly negative relationship

between transactional active leadership style (-.630**) and employee’s performance.

The results of Tables 4.15 and 4.16 further support our H2 hypothesis in alignment

with our correlation and factor analysis tests.

Another multiple regression analysis test was run to help us analysis and

predict the accuracy of our second factor analysis, Intellectual Inspiration and

employee’s performance, Table 4.17. The test results showed R value of 70% and

Adjusted R2 value of 48.7%, which indicates that intellectual styles of leadership can

account for almost 48.7% of employee’s work enthusiasm with a variance of only

0.3% less in the outcome (49%-48.7%=0.3%). The ANOVA test indicated F-ratio

value 201.517 (p<0.001) that implies that the model significantly improves the ability

of transformational leadership in predicting employee’s work quantity. Furthermore,


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the intellectual stimulation leadership factor reported significantly and positively

correlations with employees work performance. While the test was run for both

intellectual and inspirational leadership style in relations to quantity of work, the

system has excluded the inspirational leadership style due the high collinarity between

the two independent variables (.871**). Therefore, in the next test again the

inspirational style has been removed and the test was run only for intellectual

independent variable with the readiness to innovate dependant variables. Accordingly,

Table 4.18, reported significant positive relationship between transformational

intellectual leadership style and employee’s readiness to innovate with Beta value of

.597. The model shows that transformational leadership style accounts for 35.3% of

employee’s willingness to innovate with a variance of 0.3% (35.6%- 35.3%=0.3%).

With an F-ratio value of 116.009 (p<0.001) implying that the model is significantly

able to predict the relationship between our dependant and independent variables.

This further supports our H1 hypothesis and all our previously reported results of

Pearson correlation, factor analysis and regressions analysis tests.

Finally Table 4.19, reports results of our last factor analysis prediction of the

negative relationship between contingent reward leadership style and employees work

skills. The Adjusted R2 value provides that contingent style accounts for 40% of the

variance in employees work skills. The F value 9.860 (p<0.005) indicates a

significant prediction of a relationship between the dependant variable of work skills

and leadership style being the independent variable. The standardized coefficients

tables, also reported a highly negative -.212 relationship, which was also reported

earlier by the correlation test (-.135*). Although this is rather weak result in

comparison to the previously reported tests of our other transactional leadership


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correlation with employee performance, it does shed some positive response to our

H2 hypothesis.

It is important to highlight that the above various tests indicated high

correlations between the sets of transformational leadership and transactional

leadership variables. On one hand, there were noticeably high positive collinarity

between intellectual and inspirational styles of leadership (.871**). Similarly, there

was high positive correlation between idealized and individualized styles (.775**).

On the other hand, there was highly negative relationship between the various

transformational and transactional style variables. For instance, as shown in Table 4.9

the correlation test for idealised and management-by-exception (active) was (-

.782**). Also another highly negative relationship was found between Transactional -

Management-by-exception (passive) and all of the transformational leadership styles

(-.806, -.703, -.538). The above multiple regression analysis tests results for

hypothesis one and two that were in line with the three factor analysis and our

correlations test, indicates that Arab leadership styles does have an impact on the

employee’s performance. The impact of both H1 and H2 analysis represents our H3

hypothesis of Arab transformational and transactional leadership style impacting

employee’s overall performance.


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CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSIONS

5. Introduction

The research aims to study Arab leader’s leadership style and its impact on

employee’s performance. The previous chapter presented the data collected from both

qualitative and quantitative research studies. Various leadership styles were

determined which were measured using Bass & Avolio MLQ questionnaire method

and expert interview schedule with the respective leaders. The data were collected

from four different entities, under one of the leading holding companies in Dubai.

This chapter will provide detailed description of the findings in relation with the

previously discussed literature review addressing the research’s main three

hypotheses. At the end of this chapter there is a brief discussion of the implications of

these findings for future research and practice.

5.1. Qualitative Study (Leadership Styles)

There are various methods and techniques that can be used in qualitative

research methods. For the purpose of this research, expert interview was the main and

easiest method as discussed earlier due to the time constraints. This type of research

approach involves high risks and concerns compared to quantitative methods and

that’s due to the high involvement of the researchers with the respondents/

interviewees and the research process to the extended that they seem to be part of the

respondent’s life (Creswell,1998). Also as was mentioned in the literature review, the

qualitative responses may be more open to bias and/or may not be accurate, moreover,

it takes time to get the feedback. In most qualitative research investigations a lot of

ethical concerns can arise as the data depends with personal opinions and feelings that

are gathered by the researcher.


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In addition to the above, many qualitative researchers used various designs for

their studies and used different methods, to explain their interpretations of the used

methods, like an interpretive paradigm, which is more based on trustworthiness as

opposed to the conventional, positivistic criteria of internal and external validity and

reliability (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Padgett, 1998). This

qualitative data collection emphasizes quality and meaning to allow the research to

focus on the topic of Arab leadership style as the main subject rather than quantity,

hence we limited the number of leaders to focus on one area. Although, as mentioned

earlier such research method has its own specific ethical concerns, however, the mix

of research methods used in this study allow us to have a balance of both qualitative

and quantitative methods that helps to reduce bias or unethical judgment of the

researcher toward the subjects of the study. The mix of participant viewpoint that is

found in the interviews and the results found in the form of numbers or correlations

from the quantitative research builds higher reliability for the study. The MLQ test

combines two different perspectives on leaders’ styles; one from the leaders

themselves and the second is from their subordinates across the organizations.

The qualitative research conducted by the researchers enables us to conclude

from the data provided to recognize that we had three transformational leaders and

one transactional leadership style. The findings show that Arab leaders hold a mix of

leadership style. The researcher believes that all participants hold somewhat of a mix

of both leadership styles, however, some leadership behaviours supersede others,

which brings us to the fact that leadership styles may vary from one individual to

another; however, it’s very much more likely to find mix leadership styles in one

individual. This is also supported by Bass (1997), who proposes that transformational

leadership is only an extension of transactional leadership. In this constant


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transforming age, it is necessary for leaders to possess more than one style to be able

to drive the organization toward its goal. Good leaders need to develop more than one

set of skills/behaviour that enables them to improve their organization performance

(Brown, 1992). All leadership styles are effective in their own way; however, it may

vary based on the individual or organizational values. For example, it can be result-

oriented and people or team- oriented, in which case transformational style of

leadership would be required to nourish those values. Also some organizations might

be focused more on stability and results, for that a transactional leadership style with

clear goals and procedures would be required to achieve the desired results. These

findings are consistent with previous research suggesting that cultural values in

organizations are driven by their leaders, which helps aligning goals and ensuring

performance.

5.2. Quantitative Study (Leaders Rating)

Leaders are not just rated because they have the term leader attached to them

but rather they are rated based on their performance in general, their individual

characteristics and mainly their role in the organization. Each type of leader is

different and the style of leadership varies as mentioned in the literature review.

Leadership styles differ in every possible way. Leaders have rated themselves

between good and best as the bad leaders do not exist or are not allowed to survive in

this world. However, it is noticed that many leaders has transactional styles, even

though they are recognized as transformational leaders. Both of these types which are

the transactional leadership style and the transformational leadership style in the Arab

world were compared and rated and based on the data collected it was seen that the

transformational style is more in demand and are appreciated or looked up to by


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employees, subordinates, to be more precise. However, as has been illustrated in

Figure 2, studies suggested that effective leadership style can drive performance based

on the various environmental forces (Kanji, 2008).

Although, the results shown earlier in both Table 4.6 and Table 4.7 indicate

that Arab leaders have a mix of leadership behaviours, these may vary from one

individual to another. This brings the overall result of leaders rating to be almost

similar to our qualitative research, as many transformational leadership behaviours

were noticed. Putting together our qualitative and quantitative results above, we can

draw the following conclusion with regard to our four Arab leaders:

1. Some Arab leaders have more of a transformational leadership style that can be seen

in their day-to-day behaviours.

2. Many Arab leaders have transactional leadership style that also can be visible in their

day-to-day operations.

3. Many Arab leaders hold a mixed type of leadership behaviours; some do supersede

others in a manner that helped categorizing them under either transformational or

transactional leadership style. Overall, both leadership style in Arab leaders results in

effective performance of the employees.

5.3. Quantitative Study (Employees Rating)

This research found that the Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient for the

MLQ test was greater than .7 for the majority of the research constructs. The

Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients for overall transformational leadership style

is good (Cronbach alpha value is 0.885), however, if we look at each behavioural

factor the Cronbach’s alpha reliability this is generally acceptable but rather weak as

shown in the Table 4.5. While the overall Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of


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transactional leadership is highly reliable at Cronbach’s alpha 0.938, which is a good

sign. For the purpose of this research as stated earlier we have used the MLQ

instrument which is deemed to be a reliable measure for both transformational

leadership and transactional leadership style in Arab leaders both leaders rating and

employee rating. MLQ has proved to be valid and reliable measure for across cultures

and all types of organizations Bass & Avolio (1997). Furthermore, what has given this

research stronger reliability is the mix of research methods/techniques used. Leaders

leadership style had three different perspectives. The researcher’s view using

qualitative methods, leaders’ views and employees’ views of their leaders using the

MLQ technique.

The research designed by Suliman (2001) for the purpose of evaluating

performance, showed high Cronbach’s alpha reliability for all four factors as shown in

Table 4.8. Therefore, for this research, the design of Suliman (2001) is considered a

reliable measurement instrument for work performance as this allows the employees

to assess their performance in relation to their leader’s leadership style. The questions

were direct and to the point, yet related to how employees perceived their

performance and the level of their leader’s leadership style impacting their day-to-day

work and the effectiveness of their productivity.

Initial analysis found highly significant positive linear relationship between

employee performance and transformational leadership, through Pearson’s correlation

test. There is a significantly noticeable relationship between the employee’s readiness

to innovate and the inspirational leader’s leadership behaviour. Similarly, there is a

significant relationship between both individualised (.565*) and intellectual (.700**)

leaders and employees willingness to perform in larger quantity. This tells us that

leaders are advised to give specific attention to subordinates to build the sense of


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belonging and accordingly to have shared vision that leads to better performance.

Moreover, the idealised leaders have significantly high impact on employee’s

enthusiasm as well as readiness to innovate. This brings us to our first hypothesis,

which indicates that there is a positive relationship between Arab leaders’

transformational leadership style and employee performance. Transformational

leadership style allows employees to transform into what the leaders wants them to

do, with willingness. It builds those individuals who have potential within the

organizations, using these various leadership emphases.

It was also found that there was a highly significant negative linear

relationship between employee performance and transactional leadership, which

supports our second Hypothesis. As shown in Table 4.9, there is highly significant

negative relationship between Arab transactional leadership style and employee

performance. Although contingent reward leaders’ behaviour might drive employees

to complete a task, it lacked the enthusiasm and innovation. Also it showed that when

leaders focus on the individual’s mistakes and failures, they tend to negatively impact

the motivation and thus the performance. Arab leaders must realise that different

employees/individuals have different needs and abilities that’s needs catering to

achieve desired performance. There are common pitfalls that leaders tend to fall for,

as they grow into their role and their work pressure drives their behaviours and forms

their styles (Toegel & Barsoux, 2012). It is important for leaders to understand how

they are perceived as much as they must have self-awareness of their behaviours and

leadership style.

In addition to that, the regression analysis found that there is a significantly

high relationship between some of both transformational and transactional

leadership’s behaviours and various employee performance factors. Although not all


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the regression analysis showed that there is a significant relationship between

leadership style and employee performance, we can say that there is a noticeable weak

relationship between Arab leadership style and employee performance, which satisfies

our last hypothesis H3. Arab leaders must come to a level where they not only have

the awareness of their style, but also cherish it by working with their subordinates in a

manner that develops and motivates them. As stated by Toegel & Barsoux (2012) if

the leader tends toward being the type who always focuses on the big picture, he/she

must find a pragmatist team member; if the leader tend to be impulsive, he/she must

find employees who are more risk averse and so forth.

To be more precise, let’s draw the above discussion under our three main

hypotheses:

5.4 Hypothesis1: There is a positive relationship between Arab leader

transformational leadership and employee performance.

Various methods were used in this research to study the Arab leader’s style

and its impact on employee performance. The above findings show that there is high

correlation between “Idealized vision” as shown in Table 4.9. This is further

supported by the factor analysis, presented in Table 4.11, where the transformational

leadership factors were significantly positive. The results show that subordinates

under leaders holding behaviours such as individualised and idealised, demonstrate

higher performance. Individualised consideration advocates and achieves higher

demands from majority of people, as it indicates a high level of trust and

empowerment from top management. Studies also suggest that effective leadership

behaviours can facilitate the improvement of performance (McGrath & MacMillan,

2000; Teece, Pisano & Shuen, 1997).


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Intellectual Inspiration leadership behaviours also showed a highly positive

correlation with most of the performance measures, like, quantity of work and

enthusiasm and readiness to innovate. As suggested by Tannenbaum & Schmidt,

leadership inspiring and encouraging subordinates to deal with the situation more

innovatively, means ensuring a highly sustainable vision that enables them to

accomplish their desired performance (Kanji, 2008, p. 420). This is further supported

by the factor analysis results in Table 4.11, by suggesting new ways and encouraging

innovative ideas, leaders help improve workforce skills and reframe old approaches,

which facilitate performance.

Leaders using transformational styles encourage ideas and motivate

individuals to follow visions and shape their organization’s future. The C organisation

entity CEO stated under his values that “everyone is creative, everyone has potential

and everyone is a leader”. Such leadership style creates empowerment and increase

loyalty and integrity in the organization. As suggest by Zhu et al. (2005) visionary

leaders improve cohesion, commitment, motivation and thus performance.

Transformational leaders believe in building the bridge between organizational goals

while fulfilling the individual employees’ needs through high performance (Bass,

1985).

5.6 Hypothesis2: There is a negative relationship between Arab leader

transactional leadership and employee performance.

The correlation findings in Table 4.9, shows significantly negative (p<0.01)

correlation between Management by Exception (active and passive) and most of the

employee’s performance factors. Furthermore, Table 4.11 shows that “individualized

vision” factor containing Management-by-Exception has a significantly high negative


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relationship with employee’s performance. This is further supported by the literature

review, where studies suggest that this type of leadership style focuses on mistakes

and errors and deals with them when it occurs, making work more instrumental for

subordinates with fairly clear guidance that aligns with the overall goals (Brand et al.

2000) and, in general, is less effective than are transformational styles.

Further study of the impact of the transactional leadership behaviors on

employee performance illustrated in Table 4.11, shows that contingent reward

transactional leadership factor has significant negative correlation with readiness to

learn new skills . The correlation findings shown in Table 4.9 indicate a significantly

negative relation between contingent reward leadership behavior and employees’

willingness to learn new skills, and show a similar strength of association between

transactional leadership (management-by-exception passive) and willingness to learn

new skills (p<0.01). While the correlation between contingent reward attribute and 3

out of 4 of the performance is significant and negatively associated at p<0.05 or

<0.01. As further stated in the literature review, contingent reward style is identified

for its clarity of objectives and expected outcomes, so these findings are more

negative associations than has been found in a variety of other transformational

leadership research studies where these findings would be more typical of the

Management-by-exception (passive) style which implies less clarity and focuses more

on mistakes and punishments.


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5.7 Hypothesis3: Arab leadership styles (transformational and transactional)

impact the employee’s performance.

If Hypothesis 1 and Hypothesis 2 are taken as the foundation for this research,

we can say that there is a highly significant relationship between leadership style and

employee’s performance. As stated earlier, transformational leadership is nothing but

an extension of transactional leadership (Bass, 1997). One that helps followers to

reach beyond their expectations providing all the required means to achieve beyond

expectations whereas the other merely encourages achieving expected results. The

finding in Table 4.9 shows a significant correlation between all transformational and

transactional leadership behaviors and the various employee performances attributes,

except for transformational leadership inspirational behaviors and work skills, and,

transactional leadership continent reward behaviours and quantity of work. In

addition to that, the factor analysis presented in Table 4.11, clearly indicated a high,

positive relationship between two transformational leadership factors (“individualized

vision” and “intellectual inspiration”) and 3 out of 4 of the performance factors

(quantity of work, work enthusiasm and readiness to innovate).

Many studies suggest that leadership style is seen as a key source of

organizational performance (Purcell et al. 2004). Leaders with their various leadership

styles create a culture that supports their vision and goal. Individualized consideration

style creates a culture that drives individuals to out-perform and brings in healthy

competitiveness in the organization. Also the contingent reward leadership style,

builds clear road maps for subordinates to follow and uses incentives to influence the

result of the perform. As was clear from the factor analysis shown in Table 4.11,

contingent reward can influence employee’s readiness to learn (this negative

association is nonetheless surprising and contrary to what would be expected). Bass


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(1985) also suggest that alignment of reward and clear goals results in higher levels of

performance by individuals and for organizations’ outcomes.

The impact of leadership style on individuals is not questionable at this stage,

since many research studies have provided evidence for that hypothesis. The question

however was whether Arab leaders had a distinctive leadership style, and if so, does it

impact on employees, which the findings were able to address. It is clear that this

study requires further research to have stronger outcomes. However, the above result

gives a starting point that encourages us to engage in further studies within this field.

Arab leaders mainly in the UAE have shown vast improvement and development in

many areas. It would certainly be interesting to study those different abilities that

these Arab leaders have within their leadership’s styles, what and how that style

drives organizations to perform.


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CHAPTER 6: RECOMMENDATIONS & CONCLUSION

6. Introduction

The previous chapters discussed the theoretical background of the research

topic, methods of obtaining relevant information and facts and the subsequent results.

This chapter will conclude on the previous chapter’s research analysis and discussion,

highlighting the limitations of the research, recommendations, keeping in mind the

broad objectives of this research, which were to examine the relationship between

Arab leaders’ leadership style and its impact on organizational and employee’s

performance.

6.1 Limitations of the Research

The research had various constraints that limited its success in strongly

providing confirmation and support for its hypotheses. The result did identify a

relationship between Arab leadership as discussed in the previous chapter; however, it

was not sufficient to strongly support the researcher’s concept of leadership and

culture. Below we have discussed some of the limitations of the research:

Being a working student it was hard to have easy access to the instruments

used, that’s the SPSS program. It is quite costly to purchase, as such software is

mainly used by large organizations that mainly does statistics and/or by students for

their researches and it is usually available only available at the campus. This initially

posed a problem in finding the time to be at the university only for the purpose of

conducting the analysis. This problem was overcome with the support of a friend of

the researcher, who shared the software license he had in support of this study.


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The researcher has used various methods to study the leadership style, some of

which were new to the researcher and caused slight confusion that required further

reading for better understanding of the concept used. Linking qualitative and MLQ

quantitative methods for four different entity’s leadership style and the performance

of those employees thus was a challenge.

The researcher also assumed that having different sectors under one main

leadership style though managed by four different leaders could be easier and rather

effective way to support the research theory. Further, it was seen that the unique

characteristics of these four sector organizations should have also impact the

relevance of findings in these research areas. As it is an easy access to different

sector’s leadership style and employee performance, however, it appeared not to be

very effective for one major reason that being the data generated for the research was

limited to fewer employees, which was insufficient to provide stronger and clearer

results.

Another factor that maybe had a severe impact on the outcome of the study is that,

the study was conducted during the economic downturn in Dubai. Were the company

had to lay-off a number of its employees as well as cut salaries. This fear of

uncertainty and instability might have reflected the responses, of employees in two

extremes. First, there might be employees who were significantly negative, due to the

bitter experience of losing a colleague or having a family member who lost a job;

second, is being extremely positive in responses for fearing this information might be

shared with management which may affect their current employment and career

status.


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6.2 Recommendations

Considering the facts of the findings of this research there are various implications

that need to be highlighted. Leaders and employees together are the backbone of any

organization; they can drive the organization towards success or failure. It is

important to have great teams that perform towards desired objectives and targets, but

it is more essential to have a great leader who drives the team. Below are some

aspects that require further consideration for a research:

It was generally perceived that although there was a slight positive

relationship between Arab transformational leaders, it was rather weak.

Likewise the highly negative impact of transactional leaders leadership style,

draws our attention to their impact on the overall performance of the

organization, thus this means that there is a need to implement leadership style

management and training of managers to adapt to this field as assessing

employee performance is the way that will yield effective company

performance in the end. It is highly essential for leaders to recognize and to

ensure that employees are happy and their basic needs are fulfilled and in

alignment with the organization’s needs to enhance performance. The most

important factor that leaders must realize is their impact on the employees’

overall performance, as well as, the importance of maintaining a motivated

workforce to run a successful business.

Due to the lack of empirical data, this research can be further taken forward

and implemented in different organizations around Dubai, however, larger

scale organizations must be considered. Future research could be conducted


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comparing various homogenous demographic populations to further benefit

the instrument’s validity. Similar unique characteristics and environments can

be used to evaluate and compare the impact on future findings.

The above results also show that there is some strong contingent effect on the

original relationship between some of the independent and dependent variables. It is

clear that there is certainly a relationship between leadership style and employee

performance, which calls Arab leaders to focus on using it to their best. First Arab

leaders need to focus on enhancing these leadership styles, through leadership

management programs in order to first be self-aware of their own behaviours and then

understand which behaviour to be used with which individual to maximise

performance. It is vital for these Arab leaders to understand their role as coach and

mentors to help their employees grow and subsequently help the organization grow.

Second, leaders need to focus on empowering and enabling their employees; these

two factors will indirectly encourage employees to have shared vision with the

organization.

Finally, the findings have three major practical applications for our four leaders.

(1) Leaders must acknowledge that the best way to increase performance is by

empowering employees, and should aim to develop those individuals who exhibit

characteristics of potentially high performing employees. (2) Leaders should adopt

leadership styles that drive performance within their firms to drive the employees to

perform. They must adjust their behaviours and styles in a ways to enhance

subordinates’ work enthusiasm and accordingly performance, to achieve desired

goals. (3) Leaders’ characteristics should be considered when appointing leaders to

further enhance and increase employee performance, similarly, when recruiting a new


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member to the department, employees’ characteristic must be examined carefully to

best fit the department and leader’s needs.

It is also important to note that during the literature review the link between

leadership and organization culture has been highlighted as a factor that builds on

employee performance. This research, however, did not take into account the cultural

aspect during the analysis and data collection, which might have brought stronger

argument that positively reflects the result of our research topic.

6.3 Conclusion

As mentioned earlier, the overall objective of this research is to examine the

relationship between leadership style (transactional and transformational) and its

impact on organizational and employee performance. The researcher’s intention was

to examine whether Arab leaders had any leadership style and the links of their

leadership style with both organizational and individual employee performance. A

literature review was been presented in chapter two, to draw the outline for the

concept/argument via various studies and previous researches within the same context

or to support the concept. Then, for a proper study purpose of the leadership style,

four main leadership behavioural independent variables were used for

transformational leadership style and three variables for the transformational style.

Also, dependent variables were considered to examine employee work performance

both of which was investigated using a combination of two specific research methods

that were linked to three main hypotheses. Qualitative research was conducted to

study leadership style from the researcher’s point of view and to support the

quantitative research that was designed to study the same but from the leaders’ and

the employees’ prospective. Also, a quantitative research using Suliman (2001)


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proposals was conducted to measure the work performance, linking it to the

leadership style. Both research methods and proposals used were proven highly

successful in identifying the main findings of the research.

Although the Arab leaders’ leadership style showed significant reliable values,

the overall regression finding of the research wasn’t significantly high in supporting

the concept of the research. The first hypothesis indicated linear regression analysis

between transformational leadership style in Arab leaders and some aspects of work

performance through individualized leadership behaviour. The second hypothesis

showed significant positive linear relationship between contingent reward behaviour

of Arab transactional leadership style and work performance, which must be noted

that the linear regression analysis of the study showed different results than was

anticipated by the researcher or even by the correlation test. The overall correlation

between the independent transformational leaders leadership style and employee

performance showed a highly negative relationship, which proves our second

hypothesis. The findings also showed a relatively weak relationship between Arab

Transformational and Transactional leadership style and employee/organization

performance (Hypothesis three).

Overall, the result are not sufficient to strongly support the argument of the

research study, but does suggest that employee’s performance as well as organization

performance is associated with their respective leadership style.

This thesis highlights three main contributions that can be further researched.

The first is the study of Arab leadership styles and whether it is inherited, developed

or is natural skill. The second contribution is introducing the Arab leadership style

being associated in various ways with employee performance in general. The third

contribution is the theory of Arab leadership style that emphasizes their role in


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shaping organization cultures especially in the Middle East as majority of the

organizations are family owned.


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APPENDICES

Appendix A: Descriptive Statistics

A.1 Gender of respondent

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid

Male 94 44.3 44.3 44.3

Female 118 55.7 55.7 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0

A.2 Marital Status


Valid

Married 112 52.8 52.8 52.8

Unmarried 100 47.2 47.2 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0


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A.3 Age


Valid

Less than 25 5 2.4 2.4 2.4

25- 35 78 36.8 36.8 39.2

36 - 46 58 27.4 27.4 66.5

47- 57 65 30.7 30.7 97.2

58 or above 6 2.8 2.8 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0


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A.4 Nationality


Valid

UAE National 98 46.2 46.2 46.2

Non UAE national 114 53.8 53.8 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0

A.5 Education


Valid

Less than high school 6 2.8 2.8 2.8

High School 25 11.8 11.8 14.6

college degree 60 28.3 28.3 42.9

Higher Diploma 75 35.4 35.4 78.3

Bachelor 46 21.7 21.7 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0


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A.6 No of years in current organization

Frequ

ency

Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid

one year or less 13 6.1 6.1 6.1

2 - 7 98 46.2 46.2 52.4

8 - 13 87 41.0 41.0 93.4

14 - 19 14 6.6 6.6 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0


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A.7 No of years in current Job


Valid

one year or less 12 5.7 5.7 5.7

2 - 7 105 49.5 49.5 55.2

8 - 13 87 41.0 41.0 96.2

14 - 19 8 3.8 3.8 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0

A.8 Job Status


Valid

first level 21 9.9 9.9 9.9

middle level 108 50.9 50.9 60.8

lower level 83 39.2 39.2 100.0

Total 212 100.0 100.0


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Appendix B: Reliability Analysis

B.1 MLQ

B.1.1 Transformational Factors

Cronbach's Alpha N of Items

.885 12

B.1.1.1 Idealized Attributes


.680 3

Item Statistics

Mean Std. Deviation N

Item 1 of Transformational Leadership factor 2.84 .376 212



B.1.1.2 Individualized Attributes


.694 3

Item Statistics





B.1.1.3 Inspirational Attributes


.872 2

Item Statistics


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B.1.1.4 Intellectual Attributes


.782 3

Item Statistics





B.1.2 Transactional Factors


.938 12

B.1.2.1 Contingent Reward Attributes


.689 3

Item Statistics


Item 1 of Transactional Leadership factor 2.93 .364 212



B.1.2.2 Management-by-exception (active)


.968 4


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Item Statistics


Item 2 of Transactional Leadership factor .98 1.162 212




B.1.2.3 Management-by-exception (passive)


.933 4

Item Statistics



Item 5 of Transactional Leadership factor 1.24 1.206 212



B.2 Employee work performance

B.2.1 Work Quantity Factors

Reliability Statistics


.810 4

Item Statistics


Item 1 of work quantity factor 2.89 .416 212





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B.2.2 Work Enthusiasm Factors

Reliability Statistics


.983 4

Item Statistics


Item 1 of work enthusiasm factor 2.93 .492 212




B.2.3 Work Skills Factors


.955 4

Item Statistics


Item 1 of work skills factor 2.85 .367 212





Page 112 of 139

B.2.4 Work Skills Factors


.874 5

Item Statistics


Item 1 of readiness to innovate factor 2.57 .809 212






Page 113 of 139

Appendix C: Correlation

Dependent/Indepe

ndent Variables

Work Quantity Work Enthusiasm Work Skills Readiness to Innovate T

ran

sfo

rma

tio

na

l -

Idea

lize

d

Pearson

Correlation

.437**

.152* .477

*

*

.528*

*

.533*

*

.473*

*

.378*

*

.515*

*

.075 .163* .166

* .110 .356

*

*

.386*

*

.421*

*

.525*

*

.340**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .027 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .280 .017 .016 .112 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.214**

.096 .202*

*

.191*

*

.193*

*

.190*

*

.229*

*

.187*

*

-.055 -.045 .145* .029 .098 .087 .306

*

*

.222*

*

.221**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.002 .164 .003 .005 .005 .006 .001 .006 .423 .518 .035 .676 .155 .205 .000 .001 .001

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.407**

.176* .452

*

*

.456*

*

.518*

*

.488*

*

.420*

*

.499*

*

.177*

*

.232*

*

.295*

*

.185*

*

.312*

*

.393*

*

.457*

*

.517*

*

.384**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .010 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .010 .001 .000 .007 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Tra

nsf

orm

ati

on

al

- In

div

idu

ali

zed

Pearson

Correlation

.296**

-.067 .325*

*

.291*

*

.511*

*

.453*

*

.392*

*

.493*

*

-.009 .051 .078 .061 .265*

*

.276*

*

.284*

*

.387*

*

.254**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .332 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .899 .464 .261 .374 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.442**

.293*

*

.570*

*

.535*

*

.180*

*

.176* .188

*

*

.172* .325

*

*

.376*

*

.451*

*

.366*

*

.291*

*

.212*

*

.401*

*

.457*

*

.423**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .009 .010 .006 .012 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .002 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.457**

.336*

*

.561*

*

.586*

*

.301*

*

.324*

*

.340*

*

.318*

*

.204*

*

.257*

*

.309*

*

.237*

*

.175* .209

*

*

.410*

*

.413*

*

.386**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .003 .000 .000 .001 .011 .002 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212


Page 114 of 139

Dependent/Indepe

ndent Variables

Work Quantity Work Enthusiasm Work Skills Readiness to Innovate

Tra

nsf

orm

ati

on

al

- In

spir

ati

on

al

Pearson

Correlation

.426**

.380*

*

.458*

*

.343*

*

.198*

*

.194*

*

.197*

*

.195*

*

.101 .111 .127 .131 .306*

*

.359*

*

.344*

*

.380*

*

.416**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .004 .005 .004 .004 .143 .106 .064 .058 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.227**

.087 .225*

*

.341*

*

.306*

*

.323*

*

.340*

*

.298*

*

.009 .037 .106 .037 .097 .213*

*

.298*

*

.280*

*

.256**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.001 .209 .001 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .895 .588 .124 .588 .158 .002 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.475**

.412*

*

.536*

*

.451*

*

.412*

*

.441*

*

.429*

*

.420*

*

.041 .155* .171

* .087 .297

*

*

.464*

*

.541*

*

.540*

*

.500**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .554 .024 .013 .206 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Tra

nsf

orm

ati

on

al

- In

tell

ectu

al

Pearson

Correlation

.537**

.474*

*

.573*

*

.498*

*

.336*

*

.330*

*

.348*

*

.330*

*

.013 .115 .106 .070 .411*

*

.456*

*

.582*

*

.541*

*

.533**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .847 .095 .123 .311 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.456**

.397*

*

.504*

*

.415*

*

.262*

*

.257*

*

.250*

*

.256*

*

.133 .172* .161

* .180

*

*

.336*

*

.375*

*

.391*

*

.416*

*

.448**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .053 .012 .019 .009 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.391**

.319*

*

.555*

*

.530*

*

.264*

*

.259*

*

.294*

*

.257*

*

.209*

*

.285*

*

.339*

*

.320*

*

.285*

*

.293*

*

.363*

*

.359*

*

.394**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .002 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212


Page 115 of 139

Dependent/Indepe

ndent Variables


Tra

nsa

ctio

na

l -

Co

nti

ng

ent

Rew

ard

Pearson

Correlation

.074 .019 -.085 -.020 -.079 -.104 -.099 -.079 -

.149*

-

.199*

*

-

.147*

-

.175*

-.023 -

.170*

-

.205*

*

-

.191*

*

-.188**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.282 .787 .215 .773 .251 .133 .150 .253 .030 .004 .033 .011 .737 .013 .003 .005 .006

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.169* .014 .057 .130 .005 .005 .020 .004 -.092 -.080 -.125 -

.150*

-.002 -.018 -.068 -.036 .011

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.014 .839 .411 .058 .940 .941 .772 .958 .181 .249 .070 .029 .973 .795 .323 .603 .878

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

.102 .051 -.075 -.065 -

.235*

*

-

.285*

*

-

.222*

*

-

.257*

*

-

.154*

-

.177*

*

-

.194*

*

-

.243*

*

-.041 -.103 -

.151*

-.126 -.099

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.138 .462 .279 .349 .001 .000 .001 .000 .025 .010 .004 .000 .554 .136 .028 .066 .149

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

-.124 -.059 -

.208*

*

-.002 -.028 -.061 .016 -.024 -.109 -.124 -.126 -.126 -.111 -.131 -.103 -

.238*

*

-.176*

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.071 .390 .002 .975 .686 .375 .813 .724 .112 .072 .067 .068 .108 .057 .136 .000 .010

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Tra

nsa

ctio

na

l -

Ma

na

gem

ent-

by

-ex

cep

tio

n

(act

ive)

Pearson

Correlation

-.427**

-

.292*

*

-

.440*

*

-

.468*

*

-

.525*

*

-

.523*

*

-

.418*

*

-

.527*

*

-.053 -

.145*

-

.158*

-.108 -

.384*

*

-

.549*

*

-

.583*

*

-

.628*

*

-.547**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .447 .034 .022 .117 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

-.376**

-

.170*

-

.473*

*

-

.477*

*

-

.601*

*

-

.589*

*

-

.457*

*

-

.603*

*

-.119 -

.200*

*

-

.213*

*

-

.181*

*

-

.397*

*

-

.466*

*

-

.508*

*

-

.620*

*

-.450**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .013 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .084 .004 .002 .008 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

-.394**

-

.193*

*

-

.500*

*

-

.499*

*

-

.588*

*

-

.584*

*

-

.461*

*

-

.589*

*

-.083 -

.167*

-

.167*

-

.139*

-

.380*

*

-

.470*

*

-

.525*

*

-

.623*

*

-.471**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .005 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .228 .015 .015 .043 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson

Correlation

-.326**

-

.196*

*

-

.443*

*

-

.443*

*

-

.594*

*

-

.590*

*

-

.473*

*

-

.596*

*

-.101 -

.171*

-

.193*

*

-

.163*

-

.319*

*

-

.516*

*

-

.551*

*

-

.669*

*

-.524**

Sig. (2-

tailed)

.000 .004 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .143 .013 .005 .018 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212


Page 116 of 139

Tra

nsa

ctio

na

l -

Man

ag

emen

t-b

y-e

xce

pti

on

(p

ass

ive)

Pearson -.410** -

.239**

-.449** -.463** -.544** -.541** -.439** -.545** -.060 -.154* -.158* -.116 -.442** -.475** -.517** -.569** -.420**

Sig. (2- .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .385 .025 .021 .093 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson -.307** -.061 -.399** -.421** -.500** -.491** -.418** -.501** -.284** -.296** -

.337**

-

.333**

-.331** -.462** -.406** -.516** -.398**

Sig. (2- .000 .375 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson -.373** -.158* -.475** -.486** -.650** -.638** -.519** -.652** -.078 -.168* -.169* -.146* -.350** -.516** -.537** -.647** -.499**

Sig. (2- .000 .021 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .258 .014 .014 .034 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

Pearson -.370** -.163* -.495** -.480** -.609** -.597** -.479** -.611** -.093 -.180** -

.182**

-.156* -.378** -.492** -.534** -.607** -.448**

Sig. (2- .000 .018 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000 .179 .008 .008 .023 .000 .000 .000 .000 .000

N 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212 212

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

Dependent/Indepe

ndent Variables



Page 117 of 139

Appendix D: Factor Analysis and Regression

Component Matrixa

Component

1 2 3

Transformational - Idealized .831 -.135 -.184

Transformational - Individualized .797 -.050 -.017

Transformational - Inspirational .729 .435 -.092

Transformational - Intellectual .794 .466 -.006

Transactional - Contingent Reward -.219 .576 -.482

Transactional - Management-by-exception (active) -.889 .342 .105

Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive) -.894 .339 .091

Quantity of Work .719 .437 .153

Work Enthusiasm .634 -.275 -.253

Work Skills .315 .096 .854

Readiness to Innovate .744 .062 .013

Transformational Leadership .923 .280 -.084

Transactional Leadership -.891 .401 .035

Performance .897 .089 .209


a. 3 components extracted.

Rotated Component Matrixa

Component

1 2 3

Transformational - Idealized .744 .435 .003

Transformational - Individualized .618 .488 .136

Transformational - Inspirational .291 .800 -.067

Transformational - Intellectual .294 .872 .019

Transactional - Contingent Reward -.374 .252 -.639

Transactional - Management-by-exception (active) -.891 -.324 -.140

Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive) -.888 -.330 -.153

Quantity of Work .211 .813 .165

Work Enthusiasm .706 .195 -.063

Work Skills -.079 .340 .846

Readiness to Innovate .501 .538 .128

Transformational Leadership .526 .813 .013

Transactional Leadership -.909 -.286 -.221

Performance .539 .674 .335


Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.



Page 118 of 139

Variables Entered/Removeda

Model Variables Entered Variables

Removed

Method

1

Transformational -

Individualized ,

Transformational -

Idealizedb

. Enter


b. All requested variables entered.

Model Summary

Model R R Square Adjusted R Square Std. Error of the

Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .542a .293 .287 .430 .293 43.366 2 209 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Individualized , Transformational - Idealized

ANOVAa


1

Regression 16.045 2 8.022 43.366 .000b

Residual 38.663 209 .185

Total 54.708 211


b. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Individualized , Transformational - Idealized


Page 119 of 139

Coefficientsa

Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized

Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1

(Constant) -.263 .340 -.773 .441


Transformational - Individualized .308 .179 .158 1.717 .087 .475 .118 .100



Model Variables Entered Variables Removed Method

1

Transformational -

Individualized ,

Transformational -

Idealizedb

. Enter


b. All requested variables entered.

Model Summary


Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .542a .293 .287 .430 .293 43.366 2 209 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Individualized , Transformational - Idealized


Page 120 of 139

ANOVAa


1

Regression 16.045 2 8.022 43.366 .000b

Residual 38.663 209 .185

Total 54.708 211


b. Predictors: (Constant), Transformational - Individualized , Transformational - Idealized

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1

(Constant) -.263 .340 -.773 .441


Transformational - Individualized .308 .179 .158 1.717 .087 .475 .118 .100





Idealized .

Stepwise (Criteria:

Probability-of-F-to-

enter <= .050,


remove >= .100).



Page 121 of 139

Model Summary


Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .532a .283 .280 .432 .283 83.014 1 210 .000


ANOVAa


1

Regression 15.499 1 15.499 83.014 .000b

Residual 39.209 210 .187

Total 54.708 211



Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1 (Constant) -.028 .313 -.088 .930




Page 122 of 139

Excluded Variablesa

Model Beta In t Sig. Partial Correlation Collinearity

Statistics

Tolerance

1 Transformational - Individualized .158b 1.717 .087 .118 .400


b. Predictors in the Model: (Constant), Transformational - Idealized




Idealized .

Stepwise (Criteria:


enter <= .050,


remove >= .100).


Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1 (Constant) .303 .291 1.043 .298




Page 123 of 139

Model Summary


Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .615a .378 .376 .374 .378 127.875 1 210 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive)

ANOVAa


1

Regression 17.909 1 17.909 127.875 .000b

Residual 29.411 210 .140

Total 47.321 211


b. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive)

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1

(Constant) 3.161 .032 98.418 .000


exception (passive) -.265 .023 -.615 -11.308 .000 -.615 -.615 -.615



Page 124 of 139

Excluded Variablesa


Statistics

Tolerance

1 Transactional - Management-by-

exception (active) -.045b -.269 .789 -.019 .104


b. Predictors in the Model: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive)



1

Transactional -

Management-by-

exception (active)

.

Stepwise (Criteria:


enter <= .050,


remove >= .100).


Model Summary


Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .630a .397 .394 .396 .397 138.060 1 210 .000

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (active)


Page 125 of 139

ANOVAa


1

Regression 21.700 1 21.700 138.060 .000b

Residual 33.008 210 .157

Total 54.708 211


b. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (active)

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1

(Constant) 3.007 .032 93.762 .000


exception (active) -.276 .023 -.630 -11.750 .000 -.630 -.630 -.630


Excluded Variablesa


Statistics

Tolerance

1 Transactional - Management-by-

exception (passive) -.253b -1.531 .127 -.105 .104


b. Predictors in the Model: (Constant), Transactional - Management-by-exception (active)


Page 126 of 139



1 Transformational –

Intellectual .

Stepwise (Criteria:


enter <= .050,


remove >= .100).


Model Summary


Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .700a .490 .487 .280 .490 201.517 1 210 .000


ANOVAa


1

Regression 15.850 1 15.850 201.517 .000b

Residual 16.517 210 .079

Total 32.366 211




Page 127 of 139

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1 (Constant) .638 .153 4.176 .000

Transformational - Intellectual .699 .049 .700 14.196 .000 .700 .700 .700


Excluded Variablesa


Statistics

Tolerance

1 Transformational - Inspirational -.151b -1.507 .133 -.104 .242


b. Predictors in the Model: (Constant), Transformational - Intellectual


Page 128 of 139



1 Transformational –

Intellectual .

Stepwise (Criteria:


enter <= .050,


remove >= .100).


Model Summary


Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .597a .356 .353 .410 .356 116.009 1 210 .000


ANOVAa


1

Regression 19.468 1 19.468 116.009 .000b

Residual 35.240 210 .168

Total 54.708 211




Page 129 of 139

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1 (Constant) .424 .223 1.899 .059

Transformational - Intellectual .774 .072 .597 10.771 .000 .597 .597 .597




1 Transactional -

Contingent Reward .

Stepwise (Criteria:


enter <= .050,


remove >= .100).


Model Summary


Estimate

Change Statistics


1 .212a .045 .040 .348 .045 9.860 1 210 .002

a. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Contingent Reward


Page 130 of 139

ANOVAa


1

Regression 1.194 1 1.194 9.860 .002b

Residual 25.435 210 .121

Total 26.630 211


b. Predictors: (Constant), Transactional - Contingent Reward

Coefficientsa


Coefficients

t Sig. Correlations


1

(Constant) 3.629 .246 14.727 .000

Transactional - Contingent

Reward -.261 .083 -.212 -3.140 .002 -.212 -.212 -.212



Page 131 of 139

Appendix E: MLQ Scoring Key and Employee Performance Scoring Key

Leadership Factors Q# Q# Q# Q#

Transformational - Idealized 4 7 10 14

Transformational - Individualized 11 15 17

Transformational - Inspirational 6 24

Transformational - Intellectual 5 20 22

Transactional - Contingent Reward 1 8 12 23

Transactional - Management-by-exception (active) 2 18 19 21

Transactional - Management-by-exception (passive) 3 9 13 17

Performance Factors Q# Q# Q# Q# Q#

Quantity of Work 1 3 8 10

Work enthusiasm 4 9 15 16

Work Skills 5 6 11 17

Readiness to innovate 2 7 12 13 14


Page 132 of 139

Appendix F: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Leaders Questionnaire and Interview questions

Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) Leaders Questionnaire

DIRECTION: This survey is designed to describe your leadership style as you perceive it. Please

fill in the below questionnaire by marking the box that is more appropriately fits you. Remember

that no individuals will be identified from their response and there are no requests for confidential

information included in the questionnaire.

0 1 2 3 4

Not at

all

Once in

a while

Sometimes

Fairly

often

Frequently

if not

always

1 I provide others with assistance in exchange for their efforts

2 I fail to interfere until problems become serious

3 I focus attention on irregularities, mistakes, exceptions, and deviations from standards

4 I talk about my most important values and beliefs

5 I seek different prospective when solving problems

6 I talk optimistically about the future

7 I instill pride in others for bring associated with me

8 I discuss in specific terms who is responsible for achieving performance targets

9 I wait for things to go wrong before taking action


Page 133 of 139

10 I specify the importance of having a strong sense of purpose

11 I spend time teaching and coaching

12 I make clear what one can expect to receive when performance goals are achieved

13 I show that i am a firm believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

14 I talk enthusiastically about what needs to be accomplished

15 I treat others as an individuals rather than just as a member of a group

16 I demonstrate that problems must become chronic before taking action

17 I consider an individual as having different needs, abilities and aspirations from others

18 I concentrate my full attention on dealing with mistakes, complaints and failures

19 I keep track of all mistakes

20 I get others to look at problems from many different angles

21 I articulate a compelling vision of the future

22 I re-examine critical assumptions to question whether they are appropriate

23 I express satisfaction when others meet expectations

24 I expresses confidence that goals will be achieved

Rater Booklet (MLQ)- by Bernard M. Bass and Bruce J. Avolio


Page 134 of 139

Schedule of Interview Questions

1. What is your current job title?

2. What leadership style do you use?

3. What is the difference between a leader and a manager?

4. How do you measure success for you as a leader?

5. How do you encourage the development of your employees?

6. What is the most significant change that you brought to an organization?

7. How often do you feel it’s necessary to meet with your team?

8. Have you ever been a member of a successful team? If so, describe the role you played on the team and in its success.

9. Do you think your leadership style is linked with the Organization values and objectives?

10. What are the three most important values you demonstrate as a leader?


Page 135 of 139

Appendix G: Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and Performance Rater Questionnaire

Multi-factor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) & Performance Rater Questionnaire

DIRECTION: This survey is designed to describe your leader’s leadership style as you perceive

it. Please fill in the below questionnaire by marking the box that is more appropriately fits you.

Remember that no individuals will be identified from their response and there are no requests for

confidential information included in the questionnaire.

The person I am rating …

0 1 2 3 4

Not at

all

Once in

a while

Sometimes

Fairly

often

Frequently

if not

always

1 Provides me with assistance in exchange for my efforts

2 Fails to interfere until problems become serious

3 Focuses attention on irregularities, mistakes, exceptions, and deviations from standards

4 Talks about their most important values and beliefs

5 Seeks different prospective when solving problems

6 talks optimistically about the future

7 Instills pride in me for bring associated with him/her

8 Discusses in specific terms who is responsible for achieving performance targets

9 Waits for things to go wrong before taking action


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10 Specifies the importance of having a strong sense of purpose

11 Spends time teaching and coaching

12 Makes clear what one can expect to receive when performance goals are achieved

13 shows that he/she is a firm believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"

14 Talks enthusiastically about what needs to be accomplished

15 Treats me as an individual rather than just as a member of a group

16 Demonstrates that problems must become chronic before taking action

17 Considers me a having different needs, abilities and aspirations from others

18 Concentrates his/her full attention on dealing with mistakes, complaints and failures

19 Keeps track of all my mistakes

20 Gets me to look at problems from many different angles

21 Articulates a compelling vision of the future

22 Re-examines critical assumptions to question whether they are appropriate

23 Expresses satisfaction when I meet expectations

24 Expresses confidence that goals will be achieved

Rater Booklet (MLQ)- by Bernard M. Bass and Bruce J. Avolio

Performance

0

strongly

disagree

1

Disagree

2

Sometimes

3

Agree

4

strongly

agree


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1 My work speed is satisfactory

2 I search for fresh new ways of resolving problems in a task

3 I am always recognized for the quality of my work

4 I enjoy my work

5 I understands on a daily basis what needs to carry out on job, and what tools are to be used

6 I understands work goals and requirements

7 I come up with and try new ideas at work

8 My manager is satisfied with the quality of my work

9 I am always excited while carrying out my job

10 I am always able to complete quantity of work on time

11 I have sufficient job know-how to carry out work adequately

12 I try to question old ways of doing things in work

13 I stick to old established habits when carrying out a job

14 I Stick to established rules and procedures when carrying out a job

15 I enjoy co-operating with my supervisor(s) and peers for the benefit of the work

16 I am always focused and give best of the job

17 I understand my job responsibilities

Work Performance- by Suliman, A. M. (2001)


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Appendix H: Cover Letter

Questionnaire

Dear Sir/Madam,

This questionnaire gives you the opportunity to express your view on a wide range of

issues related to leadership style and the work performance. Please note there is no

right or wrong answers.

The questionnaire will be used to collect the primary data needed for a research study.

Therefore, we seek your assistance to be as open, fair, honest as possible as you can in

your responses.

The researcher assures you that no individuals will be identified from their response

and there are no requests for confidential information included in the questionnaire.

The result of the analysis will be strictly used by the researcher for study purpose

only.

The questionnaire comprises three parts:

1. General Information

2. Leadership Style

3. Employee Work Performance

Thank you,

Researcher

Documents

A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF ARAB LEADERSHIP STYLES ON ORGANISATIONAL … · 2018-10-05 · A CRITICAL STUDY OF THE IMPACT OF ARAB LEADERSHIP STYLES ON ORGANISATIONAL & EMPLOYEE’S